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.

Netflix: Streaming: How I Live Now: Incestuous love set against a vague and unbelievable World War III, and all of it based on a young adult novel

How I Live Now, is such an annoying movie in how bad it is.

            Just to be clear, if I can ask, because I do not want to go back and watch the movie again to make sure, but to anyone who has seen this movie – the boy she falls in love with and sleeps with – that’s her cousin, right? I mean, they are all her cousins, right? So that boy is her cousin, and not like a distant “if this were Nebraska it would be okay” cousin, but like immediate cousin, like, their moms were sisters? Or her dad and their mom were brother and sister? Whatever, they were cousins! Right?

            I really like Saoirse Ronan. Of course I’ve only seen her in Hanna, but damn that movie was freaking awesome, and she is awesome. I’m working on watching The Host, but damn that movie is freaking bad. The worst remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers I’ve ever seen. Like I said, I’m working on The Host so I may finish it and review it, I may not finish it, who knows (who cares, right?)? Maybe I should just forget everything else and remember only Hanna.

            So honestly, Ronan isn’t the worst part of this movie. I think the worst part of this movie is the fact that were I to bring up my problems with the movie to one who has read the book, they’d answer with: It’s in the book, you should read the book.

            Um, no, actually I shouldn’t have to read the book to understand the movie. This may be an adaptation of a book but it’s not an exact presentation of the book. It doesn’t have the author of the book above the title of the movie. If it did then I would say, yeah, okay, they’re totally connecting this movie to the book and so yeah I would probably benefit from reading the book or at least having a brief knowledge of the source material.

            That is not the case here.

            This is a movie – on its own – about a girl who is schizophrenic? She hears voices? And her sexy hunk of a cousin who can talk to animals? Is psychic? Guess what, it doesn’t matter because none of that is touched on. There’s also a world war – that is over in months? Weeks? But the cause, or who it’s between doesn’t matter because it’s never touched on. There’s an atomic detonation close enough for the kids to feel the shock wave and hear it, and have ash fall down around them like snow – but they don’t get sick? They can still eat and drink without getting sick? Guess what . . . yup, none of it matters because it isn’t explained how this is possible.

            So war has broken out, like World War III, in the closest major city, and news that people are being evacuated gets to the kids, and what do they decide to do? Well, they’re not going to be evacuated, because this is their house, and their mom will be trying to find them, so they hide and go about having sex and playing in the creek and in the forest and just generally having a gay ol’ time, like nothing at all is going on? I mean, I can sort of understand their thinking, seeing as how a freaking atomic bomb has just gone off but there’s no radiation. I think they’d follow orders and not be so happy were their hair and teeth falling out and they were getting sick and dying off, but hey, it’s not that kind of movie huh?

            The kids that we’re following throughout this movie seem like a bunch of dicks, and then the soldiers show up and separate the boys and girls and they’re apparently taking the teenage boys and drafting them into the army? WHAT!? I mean, what is going on in this war? London is bombed and wasted, okay, but there’s no other country helping out? They have to get boys of any age to help out? Dude, you have lost if that’s the case. Honestly. So but anyway, the soldiers show up and start bossing the kids around – the nerve! The dick kids fight against the soldiers – lose, of course, and the movie goes on.

            So things get exciting at least – not believable by any means – but exciting none the less, and I only had to sit through an hour and a half to get to it. With only 20 minutes left of the movie, the two girls escape the town they’re sent to and make their way back to the house and barn they shared with the boys. The scenes of their ambush by an unknown enemy was entertaining and gory with the death of a young boy, and then they’re travels at night and their coming into contact with the enemy that is apparently having some sort of sex party with a bunch of female prisoners was pretty tense. It all culminates in the two girls being caught by two men and that whole scene and how it plays out was a surprise to me and definitely changed my attitude from hating this movie to just not liking it. It was the only part in this whole movie that was honest and believable, in my opinion anyways.

            Then of course it all goes back to the same and it sucks again.

            Not much more to say – not even worth the one good part.