Hosting

It's been a while, about two years, apparently, but I am currently partial to thinking that as a return to better mental health I should take up blogging again. Directly contradicting that statement, I am getting back to reviewing movies, now that I've rediscovered sneak previews, which in all honesty cannot be said to be good for anybodies mental health.

So the first movie I'm going to tackle was not a sneakily previewed one, but just general theater offering, to wit: The Host. The movie based on the book by *cough*acclaimed*cough* writer of Twilight, Stephenie Meyer.

Sooo, yes. It's aliens. And therein lies my first big issue with the movie : aliens? just not that impressive anymore. It is relatively safe to say that if your alien isn't an acid-dripping-and-spitting shiny black monstrosity with adaptive DNA, you are just not going to pack that much muscle in the scary-department, and if it isn't insidiously creepy pod-based shenanigans, the suspense is out of the bag before act two as well.  Much like this movie, which at no point can be deemed "scary". Now, for regular readers of this blog (to whom I apologise for being this late), you know I don't find "scary" an integral part of a good movie, providing it is internally consistent and has good eye-candy.
This movie is, I suppose, somewhat internally consistent. Mostly in that the people in it are idiots, and consistently act like they are. Eye candy... well, maybe. It is certainly very pretty to look at, with wide sweeping vistas of deserty landscapes and the aliens themselves are right-pretty, but since this a Stephenie Meyer-product, we don't get much in the way of shirtlessness or steamy sexual tension. The fact that you spend most of the movie trying to see which of the main actors is Bella, Edward or Jacob certainly doesn't help.

Ok, the plot, spoilers starting now.
An alien race has invaded earth, taking over almost all human beings and eradicating hunger, strife and pollution, and generally perfecting the world in general. The aliens when they are at home look like sparkly silvery slugs avec tentacles about the size of your palms, and they invade human hosts through the neck, taking over the body, forcing the human personality to the background and into what appears to be apparent death, as well as providing very pretty shiny eyes and a general positive, trusting and polite demeanor. Which is my second big issue with the movie, in that I spend the first twenty minutes or so being squarely on the side of the aliens, what with their world-improving tack and a return to general politeness and all. Also, they are pretty, all sparkly and shiny and all, and as humans they tend to dress well and drive impossibly cool silver version of our more drab earth-vehicles. So, genteelness and style, I'd sacrifice a little bit of "being in charge" for effortless style and good transportation.

We are introduced to our main character while she is on the run from these things, and she is not effortlessly stylish or remarkably polite, which really is not helping her case from my point of view, but I suppose one has to give a little bit of leeway in the interest of story. She (obviously) gets caught and implanted, and shows us that this whole "lying back in defeat and drifting off into the great yonder"-thing doesn't always work, as she starts a full inner monologue with the invading parasite, which is actually rather well done and makes for a few genuinely funny scenes, while trying to convince said parasite to not root through her memories to weedle out the rest of the resistance. Only to then show the parasite in question the way to the rest of the resistance. Which they infiltrate (although because of the aforementioned inner monologue, we do know that the parasite isn't fully on the side of her fellow parasites), apparently with the full blessings of the leaders of said resistance.
And there is the third big issue I have with this movie : stupidity. We have a race of aliens that can invade (and thus look like) human bodies, only distinguishable by their eyes, because they can also plug into human memories they can pretty much pretend to be that person in most ways (except for a natural proclivity to be polite, which would distinguish you from most people hands down).
And in that situation, you simply cannot trust a parasitically infected member, no matter what ties used to bind you. Because (as this parasite doesn't, but could easily do) they can pretend that they have the living memory of the body inside them guiding them towards doing the right thing, only to then reveal the pocket on question to the rest of the parasites. And that means, if you are at all serious about your resistance, you shoot to kill when you see the shiny blues of their eyes.

This resistance does not, and it saves us viewers from paying money for a movie that lasts about 40 minutes, but let's face it, in a real world scenario, that's just dumb.

Also, it's pretty clear right of the bat that some personalities stick around longer than is preferred by our sluggy overlords (SOs) anyways, and that in some cases this means sluggy will defect to the pro-human side, occasionally getting wrapped up in a clump of resisting humanity. Which is what the SOs are looking for. So if you know that that is a real possibility, why not, when implanting your brethren into an available neck, also implant a small tracking device, so as to find them when they are wrapped up in their pro-human viewpoint and start refusing to report back to base? Hmmmm? For a race that has hundreds of years of experience jumping into and out of bodies like so many public transport options, this is also dumb.

I dislike dumb.

But apart from that, it''s actually not a bad movie. I'd recommend it if you are or are on an outing with any girl in the teen-range, because they'd get the most enjoyment out of the movie without being spoiled in good overlord-resistance techniques by other, better movies. The acting is.... twilight-esque, as is the writing and the obligatory angst, but all in all it is not horrendously boring or un-entertaining, just a little stupid, in places.

Oh, with thanks to TAFKAB, when I wondered who was charlies mustache, it's the wheat.