The Host

I'm talking about the 2013 film called The Host here, since there are several other movies with the same title. It stars Saoirse Ronan who is one of my favourite actors; and she features a lot. In fact she is in nearly every scene. So I was always going to like this, unless it was terrible.

It isn't terrible.

The film is quite slow paced and there aren't many surprises. But I really liked the idea of the aliens invading to experience our world and to save it from us. The contrast of the slightly nasty Seekers to the others was quite well done... and resolved neatly by the end.

All the characters were well played. William Hurt makes a good patriarch and the romantic interests of Max Irons and Jake Abel are convincing without becoming overly sentimental.

Ronan is the centre of the whole film though and it lives or dies by her performance as Melanie / Wanda. I thought she carried it off brilliantly. The whole dual personality thing just worked for me and I enjoyed the exploration of the conflicts.

Perhaps the end was a little bit soppy, but you could see that they'd sort of painted themselves into a bit of a corner there... I can forgive that.

Overall, a light, nice film; I enjoyed it.