Two's a Crowd: THE HOST

I’m of two minds about Andrew Niccol’s The Host, which is just as well, since so is the protagonist. She’s a girl living in an unspecified future after alien body snatchers have invaded. These aliens are parasitic souls who’ve attached themselves to human hosts, making their presence known through the eerie blue glow they add to the eyes. The earth belongs to them. Few humans survive. At the movie’s start, the girl is captured by these beings and turned into one of them. Rather than conforming to the pod people ways like everyone else, she fights back the best she can. All she can do is scream from within her own thoughts, a captive in her own body, a body that is controlled by someone else entirely. That’s a creepy concept. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers template focuses on those left to grapple with neighbors who suddenly become something they’re not. Here the unusual ones, the rarities, are the humans, our entry point into the story a human who is resisting her own private alien invasion. The movie that comes out of this is very serious about its silliness, by turns likable and laughable.

The early scenes of the movie require a tricky bit of acting from Saoirse Ronan, who plays Melanie, the girl forced to share her brain with an interstellar stranger. The other possessed humans want to find the remaining pristine human holdouts and colonize them as well. A lead Seeker (Diane Kruger) urges Wanderer, the alien taking Melaine over, to access the girl’s thoughts and memories and reveal the location of hidden humans. Melanie strains to not reveal what she knows about her brother (Chandler Canterbury), her boyfriend (Max Irons) and the humans they were travelling to meet. It’s a struggle between two characters that has to play out in one actor. There’s a funny little moment early on where Ronan begins writing but then, with a sudden, quick flick of her wrist, throws the pencil across the room. Sudden jolts of humanity cause the alien, still getting used to her new body, to respond to fleeting thoughts of resistance bubbling up from her host. Niccol uses copious voice over to put us in this warring mind so that Ronan ends up giving what amounts to a vocal performance that demarcates two similarly willful characters.

It’s a compellingly oddball scenario. Soon, the alien finds sympathy for the poor girl she’s forced to share headspace with and helps the two-in-one of them flee into the desert. There, led by Wanderer’s legs and Melanie’s memories, they find a group of humans huddled in the caves, farming what they can and stealing the rest from a warehouse that the alien beings have for some reason branded simply “Store.” This particular group of human rebels, one that now includes Melaine’s brother and her boyfriend, happen to be led by Melaine’s uncle, a bearded, appropriately avuncular William Hurt. He’s a gentle, resourceful survivalist who knows his way around post-apocalyptic engineering and says things like “I always liked science fiction stories. Never thought I’d be in one.” He holds out hope that his niece is still somewhere behind the glowing blue eyes that cause the other humans to want her dead on the spot, thinking that she’ll reveal their location. The rebels are used to fleeing the possessed, and indeed we eventually see a few brief but impactful car chases and shootouts as Seekers draw closer to their hideout while searching for Wanderer.  

As this is adapted from a novel by Stephenie Meyer, the woman who brought us the sparkly paranormal love triangle of Twilight, the caves are also an incubator for strange love geometry. Love triangle doesn’t quite cut it here. The boyfriend is hesitant to embrace this new being that looks and sounds just like his love while one of the other survivors (Jake Abel) finds himself drawn to the new girl’s personality, which just happens to be in the old girl’s body. Much talk of which girl has which feelings pervade the second half of the film. There’s also much more interesting discussion about how trustworthy this newcomer is and how much of the old girl still lives insider her. As Wanderer gains more sympathy and understanding of the human’s plight, there are some ethical quandaries about who really has control over this girl. The audience has access to inner struggles between the two characters; the other people see only the change. Do they treat her as the old girl they knew or the new girl they’ve come to know? The romance of it all is admirably downplayed at times, but there’s still too much hemming and hawing over who is being kissed and by whom. Still, there’s something so determinedly weird about seeing a conventional make out scene play out with a voice over objection from the other person trapped inside. “No! Stop that!” the girl mentally yells at the alien in control of her. I found it easy to scoff, but not so easy to dismiss.

Niccol has written and directed movies like the very good Gattaca, about a futurist struggle against genetic determinism, and the very mediocre In Time, an on-the-nose income inequality allegory that swaps time for money. With The Host, he’s clearly interested in exploring the deeper questions, engaging with the material in a way that draws a messy statement about personal autonomy and resisting conformity and all manner of half-formed intriguing ideas. It fills the film with lots of ponderous discussions that always sound like they’re building to something much more profound than they really are. So much of the movie refuses to make sense, either immediately – why are all humans with alien souls inside them dressing in white? – or after the fact. Some scenes play out with a flat, unintentionally funny, affect and, as the plot drifts through its paces, I found myself understanding character motivations less and less. It grows fuzzier as it nears its conclusions. But there’s something I found difficult to ignore in the mood of it all, in the stillness and slickness of Roberto Schaefer’s lovely, sleek cinematography and the lush score by Antonio Pinto. There’s a dreamily still strangeness to it all, an echo of 70’s B-movie sci-fi in its simple effects, limited sets, and off-kilter normality. I found it compelling enough in its confident awkwardness to somehow hold its schlock and seriousness in my head at the same time. I can’t exactly say I totally liked it, but I sure didn’t dislike it.

Vampire Ever After: BREAKING DAWN - PART 2

You can learn a lot of things watching Breaking Dawn Part 2, the fifth and final Twilight movie. For starters, you can learn that decapitating a vampire looks much like decapitating a Lego person. You can also learn that vampires have so many different variants that when they group together they look like undead X-Men.  Most importantly, you can learn that some of the earlier Twilight movies weren’t so bad after all. On a meta level this is the story of a franchise that fell in love with itself, growing ever more thin in plot, ludicrous in tone, confused in implications, and yet approaching each new scene with a sense of suffocating reverence to the Stephenie Meyer-penned source material. What seemed to be cheesy or earnest in Catherine Hardwicke’s original installment or heavy-handed romanticism in Chris Weitz’s first sequel seems in retrospect to be appealingly situated, allowing genuine humor and creepiness to sneak in ever so slightly around the edges of what could easily have become ponderously bonkers. Because, oh boy, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is nothing if not ponderously bonkers.

Having resolved most of the tension involved in the Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) supernatural love triangle way back in the third film and then spending a fourth film limping its way through a dull wedding on its way to some surprising last-minute body horror, there’s nowhere else to go but to bring back the biggest delight of the franchise. They are the Volturi, a scheming group of vampiric overlords based in Venice. Only glimpsed here and there since their introduction in the second movie, they police the hush-hush world of bloodsuckers, maintaining this secret for thousands of years. It’s a fun pulpy concept deliciously devoured by former child-star Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen with long black hair and glowing red eyes set so agreeably in his pasty pale skin. This time around he gets a fun moment where he lets out a startled laugh that goes up and down and trills around. Anyways, you may recall that in the last film Bella, while still human, was impregnated by Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), vampire. That child poses a threat to vampire kind for one reason or another so there’s the last gasp of conflict.

But the thing is, to describe the film to someone unfamiliar with the material would sound like utter hallucinatory madness. It’s a film with a family of vampires who stand around like they’re posing for a Lands’ End catalog, a creepy CGI psychic baby and her werewolf soulmate, and superpowered multicultural vampire covens that feel borrowed from somewhere else. And yet the film doesn’t even try to live up to its full nutty potential despite director Bill Condon’s attempts to inject some style on occasion. No, each and every moment has to quake with stultifying self-importance. Even the levity feels like forced fan service. Why else include a gratuitous – and coyly edited – scene in which the heartthrob werewolf (Taylor Lautner) suddenly disrobes before changing into his wolf form?

This final installment spends the bulk of its runtime introducing new characters and engineering strange one-last-scene curtain calls for just a couple of series regulars in between rote, sullen recitations of franchise lore. And yet no one found room for supporting character MVP Anna Kendrick, as one of the only human characters left, to stop by and bring a few laughs? By the time the Volturi float in and bring with them a scene of true energized conflict by way of a standoff that explodes into surprisingly satisfying violent, twisty digital combat before a fine rug-pull moment, it’s like finding a cheap prize at the bottom of a box of stale caramelized popcorn.

The longer the series goes on, the more it grows difficult to ignore the ways in which the story runs from its truly interesting aspects. Just look at how the half-vamp child is handled here as nothing more than cutesy, the total opposite of the concept’s inherent eeriness. I’m not asking for Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire level pathos here, simply acknowledgement of the idea’s complexity. The overarching idea of a hundred-year-old vampire falling in love with a teenage girl (and vice versa) has plenty of taboo frissons, a creepiness mingling with forbidden romance. To wish to become a vampire in order to be with him forever is a puppy love desire that dooms forever, limiting the poor girl’s future options, to say the least. The relationship has the potential to literally poison her. That’s why, upon reflection, the first film works fairly well. It marries vampire horror and adolescent angst quite nicely. That film’s final scene, in which Bella almost, but not quite, gets fanged at prom is a fun recognition of the situation’s implications, desire painfully denied for the benefit of all involved.

But now, in its final 115 minutes, the franchise engineers a resolution that works through magical thinking, resolving supernatural conundrums because True Love or something. After two mild entertainments and two films of increasingly slow, dumb storytelling, this finale’s best feat is activating a mild affection in me for the franchise’s earliest days, before it was for True Believers only. I don’t begrudge fans their enjoyment of the series; I just wish that, after a certain point, the filmmakers will still interested in letting me in instead of assuming that I already was.

Vampire and Wife: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1

There’s a good chance that you already know whether or not you’ll enjoy the new Twilight movie, the latest in this series of movies about Bella (Kristen Stewart), the human who falls in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson) the vampire, but kind of likes Jacob (Taylor Lautner) the werewolf too. Mostly unfamiliar with the books by Stephanie Meyer, I found the first film pleasantly mediocre, the second, New Moon, a bit better, and the third, Eclipse, considerably worse. My disinterest towards the story is at an all time high. This central trio started off with some small amount of genuine sizzle – never better than in the second movie – but has settled into somnambulant performances. The plot had run out of steam somewhere between the second and third films. Still, it’s the big movie of the weekend and I figured I might as well review it, so I dutifully shuffled off to see number four, Breaking Dawn Part 1.

This time around, it all starts with a wedding that somehow expects us to believe that an 18-year-old high school student should be allowed to marry a 100-year-old vampire. Fine. I’ve fallen for some pretty odd plots in my day, too. But this opening ceremony is drawn out beyond all reason. I didn’t time it, but I think I sat there for a couple of days waiting for the movie to move on to something else.  At least the wedding allows (Academy Award nominee) Anna Kendrick and Billy Burke to walk in and bring some genuine human warmth and life to the proceedings. (I think they retain their likability because they’re playing the closest thing to real people in neglected supporting roles). While lots of characters we’ve never met smile and wave, Bella and Edward drive off to start their honeymoon.

Once there, off the coast of Brazil in a mansion on a remote island owned by Edward’s adopted vampire father figure, naturally, the happy couple finally does something that they haven’t done in any of the previous films. Yes, that’s right, they sit down and play chess. What did you think they’d do? They also swim and smile and, oh yeah, they also consummate their love. This is the inciting incident for the second and pretty much final plot point of the film. You see, Bella gets pregnant even though her new husband told her it would be totally fine and, besides, he knew he couldn’t even get someone pregnant. That’s the one big lesson this stretch of the story has to teach the discomfortingly young audience I was sitting amongst. Always use protection, especially since vampirism is apparently not a good form of contraception.

More so than any of the other Twilight films, Breaking Dawn Part 1 provoked my disgust at its central premise, one of terrible gender politics and a twisted approach to sexuality. Poor Bella has absolutely no life beyond loving Edward, except when she thinks she might like someone else. This film postulates that her ultimate function is as wife and mother, even if it kills her. There’s simply no other option for a female character this weak and flat, and that’s simply unacceptable. But, by this point, I just need to acknowledge it and move on. This is also a movie series that includes a tribe of youths who turn into giant dogs that stand around and think at each other. There’s only so much you can read into it all before you start to feel a little silly.

The director this time around is Bill Condon, who got his start in horror, moved on to glossy prestige pictures like Dreamgirls and has kind of merged the two here, though it’s really a worst-of-both-worlds situation. It’s slick and sick, but without the impact each aspect could offer. He does bring the film some good stylistic touches amidst complete and utter straight-faced serious ridiculousness. This is a two-hour film in which nothing of interest happens for long stretches of time, a film with its only fleeting moments of significance arising from when Condon tries his hardest to push against the constraints of the material and expectations to punch up the style. This is a far more colorful Twilight film than we’ve received before. It’s brighter and at times sunnier (though I never did see a vampire sparkle). At the very least, it looks like he woke up the cast.

Condon serves up some stylish dream sequences and a nightmarish birthing that stays barely this side of the PG-13. For all the supernatural monsters stomping around the series, this is the first to get this close to the horror genre. After the opening, Melissa Rosenberg’s adaptation takes a long, dull slide into body horror as the demonic vampire fetus tries to suck the life out of Bella. She sips some blood, at the urging of her vampire doctor, to keep the little monster happy and Condon lovingly regards the dark red liquid as it gets slurped up a straw. “It tastes…good,” she says. Creepy. This all leads to the film’s best, most effective moments: sudden, intense, spine cracking labor pains followed by a bloody, jagged, Caesarean performed by teeth. Most of the gore is kept off-screen but the ragged editing, blurry focus, and squishy sound effects leave little to the imagination.

There are a few good moments, but they’re built on such shaky foundation. Condon’s not a bad filmmaker, but he’s also not prepared to completely subvert the material of a series that has so many fans. It would be unreasonable to expect him to be. The plot slides into crazy territory by the end. We’re talking who-in-their-right-mind-thought-this-up? crazy. At worst, it’s not even laughably bad. It’s just plain bad. It’s not sick in a horror way, but more in a total nonsense way. Of course, this is only Part 1. I can’t for the life of me guess where this is all going in next year’s fifth and final movie of the series. It’ll either be pure, unfiltered freaky craziness or utter boredom. Actually, judging by the previous films, it’ll be the dull mid-point between the two.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal! It's NEW MOON!

There’s a moment late in New Moon, the second movie in the wildly popular Twilight series, when Bella Swan, our protagonist-of-sorts, is confronted by an evil vampire who attempts to read her mind to see if she has a special power that makes her invulnerable to vampire E.S.P. He gives it a go and then pulls away from her, clearly disappointed. “I sense nothing,” he says. I thought: that’s about right. I wouldn’t be so quick to decide you can’t read her mind if I were you, Mr. Vampire.

Bella’s a weak character precisely because she appears to be a very unthinking person. This goes beyond just simple teenage feelings of invulnerability or hubris. She simply hasn’t a thought in her head. She’s a weak person who falls easily under the spell of strong, dangerous males and is quick to mistake simple lust for everlasting love. This, or rather the glorification of this, can be seen as incredibly irresponsible, especially in light of the masses of tween and teen girls that adore the series, since girls like Bella in the real world can, and sometimes do, fall into abusive relationships. A real abusive boyfriend is much more terrifying than any supernatural force.

It’s this squirmy undercurrent to the plot that is most responsible for sinking Catherine Hardwicke’s 2008 adaptation of Twilight. Though, to be fair, Stephenie Meyer’s horrible writing doesn’t inspire great filmmaking all on its own. Even so, that’s no excuse for Hardwicke’s strange choices in hokey special effects and inflated reverence, not to mention her apparent inability to direct actors or sustain a tone. I would be surprised if she had cut anything from the film for being too cheesy. The movie’s a bit of a drag as it spends vast portions of the movie introducing us to Bella, a wholly uninteresting protagonist, and Edward, a vampire whose primary characteristic is his ability to look handsome. There’s not a lot going on here and, although Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have some degree of talent, there’s not a lot to the characters to get an uninitiated audience excited. The movie asks you to buy a deep love between the two that just doesn’t seem to be there. She pushes her hair back. He says he needs to control himself so he doesn’t bite her. She wants to be a vampire so she can be with him forever. He says no. Repeat. There’s just not enough meaningful conflict happening here.

To my surprise, director Chris Weitz, taking the reins of the franchise for New Moon, seems to recognize the fundamental lack of energy in the plot handed down by Meyer. He’s still fairly reverential to the source material, bringing along all its problems. Despite expanding the plot to include a pack of werewolves to counterbalance the vampires, with whom they have a nasty, centuries-old feud, the events and ideas presented simply don’t live up to their potential. Instead, we find that Jacob, a nice Native American kid with a small role in the first film, is falling in love with Bella. Taylor Lautner plays Jacob, and he’s more than capable of filling a third corner in a developing love triangle. He’s so good, actually, you wonder why Bella would want to stay with the icy, controlling, emotionally abusive vampire when she could have a warm, caring, doting werewolf? After all, Edward jets off in the first reel and doesn’t show up again until the climax. (Does this make me a member of Team Jacob? I’m not clear on the specifics of these things).

Weitz manages to bring this conflict to a bit of a sizzle through sheer filmmaking alone. He almost overcomes the weak material by bringing in Javier Aguirresarobe, of such films as Talk to Her and The Others, as cinematographer, and the great Alexandre Desplat as composer. These two gentlemen are at the height of their powers here. By not condescending to the material and instead doing some of their best work, they help the movie not feel so cheap. The movie looks and sounds rich and sumptuous; the colors are deep and warm, the string section soars. This isn’t the dishwater palate of the first film. Here is a movie that looks romantic and lush, even if the plot isn’t always as convincing in that aspect. And even though we get plenty of slow-motion moments featuring a character moving closer to the camera, all the better for the 12-year-old girls to swoon, it’s not a technique that’s gets overused. I was reminded of the short pauses for laughter that can be spotted in Marx Brothers’ movies.

The plot’s still mostly a drag with effectively nothing happening for most of the second act, but at least we have fun supporting actors like Anna Kendrick and Billy Burke to liven things up. Weitz and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg have tried their hardest to keep things moving with a chase here, a stalking there, a near-death experience here, a funny interlude there. Mostly, though, it’s just our characters sitting around talking about immortal rules and mortal emotions. It’s amazing so much time can be spent on characterization and yet we still end up with pretty flat characters. And yet, Chris Weitz’s New Moon does something that Meyer couldn’t do, no matter how many pounds of terrible prose she expends. This movie occasionally generates a sense of rushing teenage emotion, strong and nonsensical, the headlong crash of a crush and the first sparks of attraction. Maybe later on in the franchise (I stopped reading after the second book) we’ll have to accept that True Love has developed. For now, this is almost good enough.

The movie really picks up speed with an ending that is actually kind of fun. We go to meet some of the Volturi, a clan of vampires that, in these movies’ mythology, rule all the vampires in the world. Played by grade-A actors like Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning, they, for lack of a better term, vamp it up wonderfully. They’re at once funny and menacing, no small feat. I enjoyed their contributions so much, with their dry line readings, billowing black cloaks, and piercing red eyes, that they very nearly pushed the movie into solid recommendation territory. But they aren’t in the movie for long enough. Their screen time is probably only 15 to 20 minutes (if that) of this over-two-hours production.

There are plenty of people who care very deeply about these Twilight books and movies. On the one hand, I’m glad they’re excited about something. On the other hand, I’m disappointed so many seem to be missing the uncomfortable, fairly silly, and potentially dangerous, undercurrents of the story. And yet, I have to admit I was kind of captured by this movie at times, enjoying supporting performances and adoring the style and score. I would never say that it’s a good movie, but I would say it’s a watchable, even at times enjoyable, movie. Unless you have already completely lost yourself in fandom for the series, the less seriously you take it (you hear that, vampire geeks and werewolf nerds?*) the more fun you will have.

*I say this lovingly.