10 Awful 2013 Films You'll Never Watch Again
4. The Host
If you thought Hollywood executives were done milking the Twilight franchise, you were wrong. Now that the filmed franchise is over (for now), the next step was to adapt the only other full length novel that Stephenie Meyer wrote - The Host. I will admit, it has an intriguing premise: aliens take over the bodies of all humans and infuse them with their own souls that have specific agendas. The author sought out Andrew Niccol to adapt and direct the film, the same man responsible for Gattaca, one of the best sci-fi films of the 90s. Surely he would be able to add some real emotional weight to this alien soap opera, right?
The story of the film is basically Invasion of the Body Snatches meets The Matrix. Earth was invaded, the body snatchers have already won and taken over our bodies. A handful of humans escape and of course, the aliens want to find these stragglers. Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) is used by the aliens to try and find these lone humans, which they attempt to accomplish by putting a Wanderer soul in her. Melanie somehow resists the procedure and fights this new soul for control of her body.
Im not sure what happened in the process but the film turned out to be just about THE most average, mediocre film you could imagine. Its just another rote love story with aliens tacked on top. The drama is laughable, unintentionally so. As with Twilight, there is a cliched love triangle in the middle, with Jared (Max Irons) and Ian (Jake Abel) vying for two different personalities in the same body. On top of that, there are a number of plot holes that crop up when you truly think about the film (why can't this super-race of aliens track down a handful of humans when they have far superior technology than we do?).
Andrew Niccol is usually better than this so I can only assume that some sort of interference happened between him and the studio, or even with Stephenie Meyer herself. It's obvious it was aimed at the Twilight crowd but even they werent buying it: the film tanked at the box office, raking in only $47 million worldwide. I'm not sure if that will stop studios from trying to milk the Twilight franchise (there have been rumors of spin-off movies for a while) but hopefully The Host will dissuade them adapting Stephenie's other novels.