Netflix: Streaming: The Host: I Hated It: Watch the foreign horror/monster movie The Host instead. You'll thank me.

My second movie based on a young adult novel, and it was worse than the first.

            So I don’t read these books. I will be honest – though don’t tell too many people – that I did really try to read the first Twilight. It was before the release of the movie, but during the hype, and I thought I’d give it a try. You know, I just couldn’t get into it, and I didn’t read but a chapter or two but I feel I gave it enough of a try to know that it wasn’t for me. Unlike the Harry Potter books, I read the entire first book and started the second before I admitted that it wasn’t for me, and saw only the first two movies before I said the same about the movies.

            I should have admitted at the beginning of this movie that it just wasn’t for me, but I thought I’d give it a try, and I think the fact that I actually finished this movie says that it wasn’t horrible – although it kind of was.

            It’s just a simple fact that the story is not good. How can you take Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is what this story is, and make it so extremely dull? Well, The Host answers that question like a pro. You make none of it scary, take all of the tension out of it, leave an iota of paranoia that is so feeble that it lasts minutes and is replaced with teenage lust, which leads to the next point of how to ruin a good story – make it all about teens.

            I know this movie is for teens, and hopefully they will look back on it and laugh at it as something they can’t believe they were into – like me and the cartoon Gummi Bears – but some may look at this and be inspired to write stories (great!) that are like The Host, or How I Now Live (not great! Wrong! Terrible, in fact!).

            These movies are for teens, and about teens who are acting how they feel grown-ups should act. Defy authority (How I Now Live) make love, not war (The Host), and there’s a reason why adults are not like that. Because after years of life we have learned how to play the game of life, and it ain’t by being a rebellious hippy, it’s by being a disenchanted and bitter a-hole to all the other a-holes out there.

            I’m not saying conform, nor shoot first and ask questions later, but what I am saying is . . . what I’m saying . . . I’m saying . . . Jesus, just don’t see these movies or read these books. Seriously, I shudder to imagine what my youth would have been like had Red Dawn (the original and not the watered down remake) been a young adult novel first (it probably would have been worse than the remake). I even shudder to think what my life would have been like had I grown up with such books.

            There is nothing redeeming about this movie. There is no reason to see it. If you think you will not like it, and it doesn’t sound good, then you will hate it. There are no surprises, it is exactly what you think, and it is as bad as you think.