The original name is "Host". Translated "Guest." I’m used to our distributors giving movies completely random titles, but this time they said the opposite.
When I watched this film as a novelty, suspicion immediately crept in, and did I not watch any new "Twilight"? So suspiciously vanilla, plotless and spinless. Checked in Wikipedia – and certainly, the adaptation of the same pageant Stephanie Meyer. A housewife whose novels have sold millions of copies among stupid schoolgirls, but who has not yet been praised by any critic (i.e., her work is designed for an intellectual bottom).
The earth was inhabited by polite cultural aliens, left all people alive, preserved the structure of society, raised civilization, the world flourished. So why should this cause me, as a viewer, to protest internally??? Are the original human souls miserable? Yes, people themselves will never live as they should: everywhere cattle, drunkards, drug addicts, bandits, rockers, Goths, Gopniks, football fans, minorities, Islamists, thieves, murderers, bribe-takers, corrupt officials, cops, politicians, family violence ... And the movie kind of shows us -- look, it's all over. What's the problem?
The story. We found an alien, why don't we bring her to our secret shelter? Let's let her walk around, let her guard an unarmed child, show her how things work here. Why not? The Seeker tracks down the main characters - why take the task force with you? I'm going to the desert alone against the crowd. She is captured and told that they will not look for her. Why would aliens look for the head of their operations department? Who needs it there? Again, the same as in "Twilight" throwing a girl on the subject with which of the two guys to kiss, and in the end it turns out that with both, and they do not mind at all, one leads the other: "Naturally, kiss." Fucking doll. The film lasts 2 hours and has almost no plot. I'm not asking for an action movie, an action movie, but there must be something other than the heroine making personal connections in the cave. The film is kind of about emotions, but damn it, all the actors there, except Saoirse Ronan herself, play with stone faces, they don’t cry, they don’t laugh, they don’t get nervous, they don’t tell each other cool stories, they only walk like dummies and show each other where it is – here we have a stream, here we have moths, here we have an aesculap office, here the guys go to town, here the healers look like, so you need to extract souls. Fuck, 2 hours of this. It's not a story, it's an exhibition! The film, the only feature of which could be relationships and emotions, does not contain them at all. I really got a tear from Pretty Bones, from the end of Man on the Moon, and there's nothing. Emptiness.
Still, there is one plus. In the beginning, I thought it was silly that she didn’t even try to explain to the community that Melanie’s original consciousness was alive. And then he admitted that her line of conduct was right - words are not worth much when you do not believe. Anything you say will be resisted, so if you want to make people understand, you need them to get to it. Annie guided them to that understanding, and she succeeded. Also, the film several times puts before the heroes the opportunity to kill the enemy: the heroine when he gets into the community, the guy in the creek, the Seeker in the palms – and each time the characters choose the path of kindness and forgiveness. People need to be constantly reminded of this. We know very well how quickly people turn into bloodthirsty cattle when they are turned in the opposite direction. Therefore, sad as it may seem, but yes, it is necessary to remind the viewer again and again of kindness, without it in any way. It is poorly transmitted, but still transmitted, so that the film, for all its boredom and childish stupidity, is not quite zero. And if I'm happy to give Twilight one, I'll give you a higher grade.