I have some issues with self esteem. There's plenty of roots for it, and its not a tremendous problem, but combining those small self-worth issues with my catholic Irish heritage and dry, Midwestern childhood means from time to time I need to give myself a decent punishment simply for wasting so much precious oxygen every time I talk. Some people get in to fights, some people turn to hardcore drugs, some people outright die to escape the shame of their lives. Tonight, I envy them. You see, I don't like getting in to fights, I'm squeamish around needles, and dying seems a bit messy, so I have none of those.
Instead, I hurt myself with movies.
I throw myself at films that I know will be terrible and I always come away feeling a little bit worse. Usually, though, the feeling is mixed with some sort of perverse pleasure; I got to see someone's hard work reduced to what amounts to turn smeared on a lense, so I can always gloat. At least I'm only wasting my life, and not precious, precious lenses.
This week, the film was "The Host." "The Host" follows the tale of a girl who falls out of an office building on to the concrete, where she is captured and turned in to an alien. The first third of the movie is told entirely in flashbacks, where you learn details about Bella Swan Clone's family, including her brother Anakin and her boyfriend Edward or whatever. Then she puts a chair in front of a door, flips a car, finds some wheat, and I guess aliens or something.
"The Hostess Twinkie" is a movie that isn't really a science fiction film and isn't really a romance film. There's some drama but then the sources of the drama die. There's a few punches here or there, but the movie is incredibly boring, since it keeps jumping from a forced romance between a character who sort of looks like Matthew Lilliard and Alien Bella and the weird, sci-fi world of the future parasites. Also Edward is regular Bella's boyfriend but regular Bella is trapped in Alien Bella and its all tit sup from here folks.
The premise isn't really that difficult to understand. There are aliens called "Souls" which live inside chrome space eggs or ships or something. They are transplanted in to humans via the neck, and somehow have mind control powers without altering dopamine levels or anything similar. They then control the humans to make the planet better at the expense of free will. Simple, right?
Yes you're 100% right. There isn't any complexity added in. All humans are basically now totally trusting of total strangers to the point where you can steal an old man's car and he won't even blink. Also they never have sex. Regular humans, meanwhile, fight a lot but generally behave like people do. Somehow, only a handful of people in the film manage to avoid being assimilated by a peaceful race of aliens with no significant weapons of any kind.
God, I apologize for being all over the place, but the movie has so many bad things its easy to get lost in the complexity of its awfulness. I'll just list everything bad and you can look from there.
The acting is terrible, the special effects are garbage by standards from 5 years ago, the sound design is uninspired, the costume designer has no concept of dirt, the dialogue is delivered poorly and written like a puckered anus. To top all of this off, this is not a movie to watch if you enjoy being a woman.
Women and minorities are all assistants or sex objects. The main character is the center of physical desire from 3 characters at times, without ever having sex or showing that she is more complicated than a paper bag with a smile drawn on it. Men are all confused by sexual advances and never have ulterior motives nor desires aside from "get stuff" and "have sex" or "dad."
There are a handful of black people in the movie, and I guess everyone asian died. So did any Mexicans, which is fine since Southwestern U.S. is known for being free of any kind of Mexicans or latinos of any kind. Black people get to be assistants and shot. Sometimes they drive the truck, but they have no major speaking role and are constantly being bossed around by either elderly white men or blonde-haired blue-eyed white women.
I can't even think straight. Its so late and the movie was so bad I can barely type this without pounding my face in to the keyboard in frustration. It was somehow worse than all of the Twilight movies. At least Robert Patterson hated those films.
At first I was all "How can anybody hate The Host? That movie rules!"
Then I was all "No, that's not the movie he's talking about. But wait - Andrew Niccol has a new film? I love Andrew Niccol!"
Then I was all "seriously? You couldn't have solved that one by inspection?"
Oh no, its bad. The terribleness of the Host is so fucking obvious its hard to believe anyone will watch it.
But its way, way worse than Twilight. Twilight at least had dumb appeal and I guess with some imagination the romance was at least present. The Host is a shitty scifi movie with a bad romance subplot. Its transcends Twilight's awfulness in so many ways.
Outside of Z grade comedies like "A Haunted House," this might be the worst movie of 2013.
speeding_snail, you can add this film to the "worst possible movie you can find" and watch it with your friends while eating chinese food :)
You've made me want to watch it so bad now. My wife and I love horrible movies, though we usually watch them at home where we can drink at the same time.
So we finally saw it, and it was as horrible as you said it would be. From the white glowing master race which comes to save mankind from itself and shoot black people to an anticlimactic, "You can save the world if you're just nice!" and Deus ex Machina every lives happily ever after, lolololol. And apparently Uncle Jeb ate everyone's lines because he wouldn't shut up and everyone else just stood there with their silent faces taking up the whole screen.
More reviews need to involve this level of how the flick messed with the reviewer's brain. Not only have you saved me the time, but you've been more entertaining than several movies. Thank you!