The Host is a 2013 science-fiction romance directed by Andrew Niccol, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer, and starring Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Diane Kruger, and William Hurt. I finished it with more questions than I had going in, so in the interest of honesty, this review is going to be less a critique and more a formal request for answers.

The premise, briefly: glowing alien parasites known as "souls" have invaded Earth and taken over almost all of humanity by inhabiting people's bodies. One soul, Wanderer, is placed into the body of a young woman named Melanie, only to discover that Melanie's original consciousness refuses to be erased. The two minds end up sharing one body, and from there the film builds toward its central, deeply strange romantic tangle.

Let me start with the questions I could not shake. First, why is this two hours long? The pacing is glacial, and the film simply does not have two hours of story in it. Second, and I need someone to explain this to me, why does everyone's eyes look like that? The "souls" are signified by a silver ring glowing in the iris, achieved through contact lenses, and the overall effect is that the entire cast appears to be in mild ocular discomfort every time they blink. I spent a genuine portion of the runtime wondering whether the actors could actually see.

The film's biggest problem, though, is its love triangle, which is one of the more uncomfortable romantic setups I've encountered. Because Melanie and Wanderer share a single body but are two distinct people, and because each is in love with a different man, the film ties itself into a knot that no amount of earnest voiceover can loosen. It culminates in a moment where, having had one love interest kiss her, the film effectively arranges for the second man to kiss her too, in order to satisfy the other consciousness. Watching it play out as though it were a sweet resolution rather than a consent-and-identity nightmare produced a full-body cringe. It's meant to be romantic. It is not.

There's a broader point to make here, which is that The Host is a textbook example of what happens when an author strikes gold once and is handed a blank cheque to replicate it. Stephenie Meyer, off the back of the Twilight phenomenon, produced this hoping to launch another multi-film franchise. It did not work: the film bombed critically and commercially, and the planned sequels never materialised. What's genuinely baffling is that it was directed by Andrew Niccol, the mind behind Gattaca and the script for The Truman Show, a filmmaker with a real pedigree in thoughtful science fiction, which makes the flatness on display here all the more surprising.