What Critics are Saying About 'The Host'

The premise, courtesy of the film's official website:

What if everything you love was taken from you in the blink of an eye? "The Host" is the next epic love story from the creator of the "Twilight Saga," worldwide bestselling author, Stephenie Meyer. When an unseen enemy threatens mankind by taking over their bodies and erasing their memories, Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan) will risk everything to protect the people she cares most about — Jared (Max Irons), Ian (Jake Abel), her brother Jamie (Chandler Canterbury) and her Uncle Jeb (William Hurt), proving that love can conquer all in a dangerous new world.

Here's what critics are saying:

On screen, it's just another chaste, action-starved and absurdly talky action romance. ... The action beats — chases, hunts, fights and shootouts — are few and far between here. Too many characters (William Hurt is Uncle Jeb, patriarch of the resistance) have to spend too much time on exposition —explaining who they are and how this Brave New World works. The young would-be lovers talk and talk and talk. — Roger Moore, Mercury News

By keeping everything else at a level best described as 'barely competent,' 'The Host' ensures the focus remains on the weird, intense, psycho-sexual underpinnings of the story. If you’re not on its wavelength, it’s just a clunky B-movie that can’t even get the basics of a decent alien invasion right. — Anthony Morris, The Vine

... 'The Host' is a bit loftier (than 'Twilight') in the message it’s trying to convey but for every inch the film moves forward in making a point about a peaceful society, the sappy romance elements drag it back a few feet.  Worse, the film has to overcome more than a few silly plot devices such as a character having an ongoing internal dialogue with a secondary personality living inside her head. — Joe, The MN Movie Man

There's not nearly enough action to begin with. A lot of times, I think action movies don't have enough character develpoment. This movie has too much character development. ... It's over-long. By the end, you're just kind of bored and you can't wait for it to be over. — Becky Kirch, PopSugar

"The Host" is rated PG-13 and runs 125 minutes.