One of the joys of the school holidays is a constant rotation of teen movies on the tv. The Host was last up. And O – M – G it was ridiculous. Now, I’ve never read any Stephanie Meyer, but I understand her books are incredibly badly written, with turgid and stilted dialogue between the unhappy participants of moody teenage love triangles. There’s a supernatural bent too. The Host is similar. Decent enough premise; Earth has been conquered by aliens that insert themselves into your spinal column and make you nice. But one human, Melanie, refuses to be subsumed by her thousand year old Parasite-called-Wanda, which causes a few problems with her boyfriend, and another kid who falls for the alien.
The Host is truly a beautiful looking movie; the New Mexico locations are absolutely jaw dropping. But it’s sunk by the source material; the dialogue just never quite rises above clunky, and all the lines are portentously spoken as if they’re always saying goodbye. The Child, for what it’s worth, railed against the inconsistencies with the book.