The Host - A Non-Subtitled Review by Imogene

 The Host

Directed: Andrew Niccol

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Chandler Canterbury, Rachel Roberts, Diane Krugar

Genre: Action, Adventure, Romance

Stars: 2.5/5

 (Possible Spoilers)

My Non-Subtitled Version

My sister contacted me and said she wanted to go and see ‘The Host’. I did, but this version was going to be non-subtitled, and I was dubious of whether to actually go, but she offered to pay, so it swayed my thoughts. Now I know I vowed pretty much to never go to another non-subtitled film, but I knew in a few weeks time I would be going to see it again with subtitled. So in the end I decided I would do a 2-part movie review, one with and one without, and as an experiment, how much I understood with and without. So here goes..

I tried to read this story soon after the Twilight saga, and I found it incredibly difficult to follow, so soon I left it, even though it was written by the same author as Twilight. I imagined it would just as easy reading, but struggled to get into the plot – It felt like it took forever to get no-where! So it wasn’t until I saw the Trailer for the film that I took an interest in it again and possibly if I went back to the book now I may enjoy it more so.

Visually I found the film really interesting, (especially the eyes!) The film was one of them films where if you didn’t hear the speaking, then you’d miss out on the important stuff like how they explain how the planet now works and what the hosts’ reason for being about, but I missed all of this and I found it frustrating. I think I would’ve coped better if there wasn’t so much background music whilst they explain things. For a Deaf person, this film really wasn’t the best, even at the best times! There were a lot of scenes in the dark and underground which caused lots of shadows that covered people’s faces as they spoke, and there were echo’s as they walked around the cave. So it wasn’t filmed for the Deaf in mind, I have to say!

But even I found in the daylight, the camera didn’t focus on any of the faces for very long. This was really annoying, especially when there was one person standing in front of the other speaking and they were in focus on the person in front, so it wasn’t easy to lipread!

However, I did learn some things, and I did understand the voice of Melanie inside wanderer, which I thought was surprising, but I don’t know if that was due to volume?

I have to say I found the storyline very interesting even though I probably missed a lot of the facts, but it was a film I could get the gist, just by looking at it and by the way they acted and look – And I relied on this loads!

So this is what I thought the plot was about:

There was this girl called Melanie who had a brother called Jamie who were humans hiding away from the hosts with this group. The hosts were about peace and honesty, and no host could lie about what they were doing, or anything, they trusted with everything. One night the group go to this building where the Hosts are trying to find them, to turn them into one of themselves. Melanie left her brother and promised she’d come back, only to get chased by the Hosts and later in the film we find out that the group kill themselves rather than be turned into a Host. (To stop the Hosts extracting their thoughts and memories on finding the other humans!) She jumped out of a storey window, only to survive the fall and they turn her into a Host.
She then wakes up, then walks to the bathroom and you hear Melanie screaming and shouting from Wanderer’s head, and that Wanderer can talk back to her. (This makes things interesting!) They have a very complicated relationship between each other in the beginning, as they clashed to control the body and mind. There is a lot of flashbacks if Melanie’s memories of her and her boyfriend Jared (I think this was his name?) Wanderer was interrogated by another Host for Melanie’s thoughts on where the other humans she was with are. (I later learned in the film that she tricked Wanderer, by showing her not the true version of the places, to save herself and the others) Melanie manages to get Wanderer on side to try and find her brother and do her promise of going back to him. They manage to escape and get a car to go back to the group, she tricked her multiple times to cover the tracks of where she was going. They crashed the car and she had to walk through the desert to get there, she collapses and her ‘Uncle’ finds her and gives her water, but they don’t believe it’s her as she is in a Host body now. (They knew she was a Host as she had a ring of blue in her eyes)

There was a large part of the film where they weren’t sure whether Melanie was still inside Wanderer, but they start to believe to think that she is, and slowly they begin to trust her. Not after several attempts from a few people to try and kill her. This part of the film was a good way to get to know both, Melanie and Wanderer. We learnt that they both have a very caring side, and are both genuine souls – however Melanie was stronger willed! It was strange for them both to be leading this life together, yet separately. They become friends. There becomes a love triangle (Stephenie Meyers likes her love triangles, doesn’t she?!) but this is where I get confused as to who is exactly in the love triangle. As I thought Wanderer falls for her protector, but I’ve read that it’s Jared – So this is something I want to work out when I watch it subtitled!

Wanderer starts understanding the way of the human race and finds sympathy for Melanie’s group. She helps protect them from the Hosts, and makes a bond with them.

Wanderer finds that they have done experiments on extracting the soul of the Host out of the human bodies and she finds some dead – this leads to her being scared for her own life as they promised they wouldn’t hurt her. She makes a decision that Melanie needs to have her life back, so they do the operation on her (she expects to die) only for her to wake up in another body, of another who is dead.

The film was really emotional at times, although when my sister was red faced and crying, I wasn’t – so this definitely makes me realised that I missed out on the sad stuff! So I can’t wait to see it properly with subtitles and be able to understand it fully.

Please don’t take my wording on the plot as I’m probably very wrong in a lot of areas but it’s a deaf girl’s view on the film – and I hope it shows you exactly how difficult it is to miss out on vital parts to the storyline.

I did enjoy watching the film, but there’s only so much enjoyment you can get out of not understanding the film – It probably would’ve been much more successful if I had read the book then I’d know what was happening..

I give this film 2.5/5 stars as I couldn’t follow the storyline very well and also the voices wasn’t clear nor in focus – I understand that normal hearing people wouldn’t have a problem with this, and it appears there wasn’t, but for me it made the viewing not a very good experience. But, it had a decent story line and some decent eye candy, so it had some good points ;)