By Emma Street
Warning: spoilers for The Host follow!
After the success of the Twilight franchise, movie execs must have been up to their eyeballs in pitches for The Next Twilight. “It’s like Twilight but with yetis instead of vampires”, for example. Or with Merpeople. Or Robotic Monkeys. Or Parasitic Aliens!
The Host, on general release at the moment, has a better claim than most as The Next Twilight given that it shares Twilight’s author, Stephenie Meyer and is squarely pitched at the same fan base.
Like Twilight, The Host has an attractive teenage female protagonist, weird goings on and dialogue so clunky that I’m not sure Meyer has actually ever heard people speak. It’s not so bad when her words are said by centuries old vampires or alien species new to our language (and possibly the concept of speaking altogether) but it makes no sense for human characters to sound like they learnt English from 18th century gothic novels translated into Japanese and back again.
The promotional posters have emphasised the film’s central love triangle. In this case, given that there are two people inhabiting the same body it’s more of a love square. Or a virtual love square contained within a physical love triangle. Love geometry becomes complicated when your planet has been taken over by alien parasites.
MostlyFilm 