A good number of movies are based on a book that came before it. Sometimes very faithful to the source material and sometimes the only thing they kept was the title. Either way when a book you read gets turned into a movie, there is a mix of excitement and dread that goes hand-in-hand. Of course, you’re excited to see all the characters on the big screen, but there is the dread in the back of your mind wondering: what if they mess it all up?
Back in the 2010s, young adult dystopian sci-fi was at its peak. The Hunger Games, Divergent, and others books were getting the big screen treatment. One of those was called The Host. The original novel was written back in 2008, by the same author of the Twilight books, Stephenie Meyer, so ideally making the book into a movie would be a slam-dunk, right? Not quite. It never reached the success of the Twilight movies and divided audiences. I had had the book, The Host, on my shelf for years with the intent of reading it and finally did last year, and recently I gathered the courage to watch the movie.
All in all, it was a fairly faithful adaptation to the book. A lot of the dialogue was lifted straight from the book, and the survivors’ cave hide-out looked exactly how I pictured it in my mind, so it was really cool seeing it on screen. The actors also played their parts well, especially William Hurt (RIP) as Uncle Jeb, and the woman who played the antagonist Seeker, Diane Kruger, did a very good job at making her character hateable.
I do realize when adapting an over 600-page book into a 2-hour movie, some things are bound to get cut and changed, like characters not being included in the movie and the sets given more of a futuristic alien feel. My main gripe is that the pace felt a little off. When it starts, you think it’s going to be very action-y, but it slows way down when she reaches the survivor colony, and becomes more about a love-triangle than action. I think the majority of the budget went to the shiny silver sports cars and helicopters, in turn making a lot of the sets look cheap. But the most egregious injustice in the movie is that they end with the song “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons. I know it was 2013 and that song was everywhere, but the movie isn’t even about the apocalypse; it’s about a peaceful race of aliens invading Earth. Dystopian? Sure. Apocalypse? Meh, not really.
There were a lot of great aspects in the book that were cut for time, which again I do understand. I think the book probably would’ve worked better as a limited series or possibly as just one TV season, as there was a lot of solid world building and characters that deserved screentime but weren’t there. I suspect if the movie would’ve been a success that Stephenie Meyer would have continued her plans for the intended trilogy of The Host, instead of leaving the rest of the series perpetually on the shelf.
I personally wouldn’t watch the movie again, but you can decide for yourself. You can stream The Host for free with ads on CTV Movies through Crave.
Comments