The Host - book and movie

Image taken from www.imdb.com

Another fiction-adapted-movie, The Host is written by the famous Stephenie Meyer. I read the book almost 2years ago, right after the final book of Twilight saga. I expected the storyline to be somewhat similar with Twilight (heart-wrenching romance with intense action and good looking characters) but it isn't. The Host falls into sci-fi genre, with a mixture of romance in it...very much of drama (that I dislike at most of time but I like this one). Unlike any other imaginary stories (like by Neil Gaiman which his imaginary worlds are pretty hard to grab), Stephenie Meyer used the present (the world that we know) as the setting. However, The Host happens in the far future

The book cover (Indonesian version)

It is about the utopian world where people lives in harmony. No more war...famine...death due to sickness...violence...simply a perfect world to live in...with a price of your life (or probably your consciousness). It is told that the earth has been invaded by alien parasites called soul (which is depicted in bright sparkling sort of 'leech' with lots of tentacles). Soul is kinda immortal (centuries-long-life will be the correct term since soul can be killed as well). Soul can be transplanted into any other body (not necessarily human - can be animal or any living organism). So in case a body has outgrown its age and die, soul can be moved to another living body and retain whatever memory and knowledge obtained. Once the soul invaded the body, it takes over everything...the memory...the knowledge...the feeling...basically the whole lot of your body and you-yourself (your soul/consciousness) would be disappeared (so now you know why the title is The Host). The host (distinguished by silvery circle on the eyes) will continue living as the person before and bring peace and harmony in life. However, apparently not every human welcomes the soul. These few humans fight back...and now, the only war happened is between the host and human resistance.

The Host retell the story of a soul called The Wanderer (Wanda in short) which was put inside Melanie (being caught while she is searching for her family). However, instead of disappeared, Melanie insisted to fight Wanda. So both minds...both souls were living in a single body. Wanda was supposed to help finding the remaining human resistance, however, after few months, Wanda was more overwhelmed by Melanie's feeling toward her brother - Jamie and her lover - Jared. Torn in between Wanda's loyalty to the society and Melanie's love, Wanda began the journey to find Melanie's family...not to report them to the official seeker but to be with them.

Upon her verge of death in the desert, the human resistance captured her. The human didn't believe her story and tried to kill her, however, upon some time, Wanda succeed in getting trust from the human resistance. The only problem was Jared, her lover wanted Melanie back...without Wanda inside her. Meanwhile, Wanda fell in love with Ian (which definitely despised the thought of sharing their intimacy with Melanie). At the end, Wanda finally resigned, to give back the body to the rightfull owner and help human resistance in freeing the hosts without killing the souls.

It is a beautiful story about love, loyalty, about how you live your own life. I admitted, it would be pretty hard to understand if you didn't read the book (my hubby kept asking me questions why was this and that). It was a challenge to interpret 770pages of story into 2hour movie. Anyway, I could say that the movie leans on the fiction and it was something that I've expected before watching.