The Host (2013)

Oh my God!  The Host hasn’t been released yet?  You mean they’re just entering post-production?  Good, then hopefully that means there’s still time for me to prevent at least one poor soul from watching what is sure to be absolute rubbish.  “Oh, but you haven’t seen the movie!”  “But, it’s by Stephenie Meyer!”  “The book was amazing!”  These are some questions I’m anticipating, and I believe I have sufficient evidence to support the inevitable fact that this movie will be one of the most horrific things to infest theatres in 2013. 

Earwig things crawling in people's ears and possessing them?

  How original!

“Oh, but you haven’t seen the movie!”  No shit.  No one’s seen the movie.  They’re in post-production; therefore technically there is no movie yet.  They’ve gotta piece all their fabulous footage together and After Effect in some magic shit before 15-year-olds and their moms can devour this nonsense in theatres.  However, I have read the book.  Many, many years ago (five-ish I think) I was working at a chiropractic clinic part-time.  I’d have a lot of downtime, particularly in the summer, so with no homework I looked for a series of books to read.  Twas at that moment I discovered Twilight.  Oh, vampires and high school and depression!  I can totally relate to those things!  Well, my dumbed-down summer brain found that these books did an excellent job of passing long, empty office hours.  Now, now, don’t lose faith in me.  Once my brain regained full working order during the coming school year (and I saw the movie) I realized Twilight for what it was: a poorly written saga about one of the lamest people to ever (figuratively) exist.  I’m talking about Bella, of course.  Unfortunately, I made it through all the Twilight books before school started back, and was I need of some other written word to pass the time.  And then I bought The Host.  Yes, yes, I paid money for it!  But I didn’t know it was going to be so awful!  So I read it.  Well, I tried.  Now, I’m the girl who read the fourth Harry Potter book at the age of 12 in less than 24 hours, so I border on being an excellent and quick reader.  Reading The Host was like trekking through three-foot deep mud with cinderblocks tied to my feet.  It took me over 2 MONTHS to finish it.  It became a sort of torture.  I hate leaving books unfinished and I kept telling myself it’d get better, but it just went on and on and on and on.  And nothing happened.  Except some stuff about some people hiding in some desert mountain cave thing while the rest of the world suffered from some severe case of a silvery earwig epidemic.   Now, I’ve read boring books before.  The Prince and the Pauper was kinda boring.  But Mark Twain can write so beautifully, goddamnit!  Oh, and he didn’t write books that were 400 plus pages of utter bull crap.  Seriously nothing of interest happened in this book until maybe the last 40 pages.  Maybe if this were a 150 page book, I’d have enjoyed it.  Okay, well maybe I’d have been able to get through it in less than fortnight. 

“But it’s by Stephenie Meyer!”  Seriously if someone is using this as an excuse, I… I don’t even know what to say.  Except read above!  If you are looking forward to this movie because it’s by the Twilight bitch, then you seriously need to reevaluate your life and the direction you’re taking with it.  I thought that by now even “twihards” had agreed that Meyer is a terrible writer?  Guess not.  “Oh, but you’re just jealous!”  Damn straight!  How come I’m not famous yet?  I’ve been writing terrible crap for years! 

People Against the Unethical Treatment of Thesauruses

“The book was amazing!”  No.  No it wasn’t.  Again, the book was long, tedious, dull, bland, vanilla, generic, etc.  With no likeable characters (it’s called character development!) I honestly wanted the pacifist aliens to just bomb these people’s hidey hole.  Alas, that never happened.  Just like in Twilight, Meyer managed to write and publish a novel populated by two-dimensional characters that seriously stirred up zero emotion from me as a reader.  I mean the main character is technically an alien with no emotions.  Way to play to your strengths, Stephenie!  I read a comment on Amazon.com that says:  “Just like Twilight is a vampire story for people who don't like vampire stories, The Host is a sci-fi novel for people who don't like sci-fi.”  So basically what you’re saying is “Just like Twilight is a vampire novel who people who don’t like books, The Host is a novel for people who don’t like books.”  Deep stuff. 

So, this review is mostly about the book, but honestly don’t go making a movie over a book that can’t even stand on its own.  Without Twilight I seriously doubt this book would have made a cent.  Which raises another question:  How the hell did The Woman in Black become a movie?!  Anyways, I’m sure that The Host will be a much better movie than it was a book.  Because the movie will only last two hours.

It almost makes me want the apocalypse to hit in December.

            Fin.