Alien invaders, hosts fight to survive

	In theaters Stephenie Meyer’s film adaptation of her novel, “The Host” opens nationwide Friday. In Albuquerque, there are 9 p.m. showings tonight at local theaters. See Friday’s Venue for Roger Ebert’s review.

“The Host” is based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer, who found mega success with “The Twilight Saga” novels and films.

The film is set to open nationwide on Friday Early screenings will be held around Albuquerque, beginning at 9 tonight.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the nearly $43 million film is tracking at No. 32 for the year’s most-anticipated movies.

“The Host” is set in the not-too-distant future, when a human being, or a host, and an alien invader, or a Soul, trapped in the same body fight for survival, for the men they each love and for the destiny of the planet.

The Souls have transformed the planet into a clean, safe, peaceful world – but at an unthinkable cost: Most of the human race has been eradicated.

A few, like Melanie Stryder, played by Ronan, a resilient young woman, have survived in hiding, their lives a constant struggle to avoid capture and annihilation.

“It’s a nice twist to a sci-fi film,” Holbrook says. “I have to admit, I wasn’t familiar with the book before I got cast. But as soon as we started working, the story just came to life and it became a totally different world.”

Holbrook says most of the filming took place near Albuquerque and Shiprock.

“That place is out of this world,” he says. “It was so inspiring to be out there and be one with nature. Shiprock is a main component in the film. We shot a lot of the movie’s scenes out there.”

Meyers worked on the film adaptation with director Andrew Niccol.

Niccol says that, in the film, the surviving humans have taken refuge in a series of underground caves connected by tunnels.

He says the crews placed their sanctuary in the northwestern New Mexico desert, near a spectacular geological formation known as Shiprock, which serves as an important landmark in the film.

“We found the most fantastic exterior locations,” Niccol says in an interview. “I always begin work with a lot of visual references, and this is the first time I’ve found a location that’s better than my best reference. Shiprock is awe-inspiring. It is so beautiful that people assume it’s CGI.”

Niccols says one of the difficulties in shooting a film that is set in a cave is that it is nearly impossible to use a real cave.

Max Irons and Saoirse Ronan star in The Host which was filmed in Shiprock and Albuquerque. (Courtesy of “The Host” trailer )

He says to recreate the elaborate community imagined in Meyer’s book enormous sets had to be constructed on a 250- by 125-foot soundstage at Celtic Studios in Baton Rouge, La., and that the walls of the structure resemble the sandstone and limestone found in the New Mexican exteriors.

“The floors and interior dunes were made from a mixture of three different types of sand, blended to match the landscape in New Mexico,” he says. “Cave walls are 20 feet tall, with visual effects extending them even further in some scenes.”

Holbrook plays Kyle in the film, and he describes the character as protective.

“He’s afraid of losing the rest of his family,” he says. “So he works his hardest to make sure that they are all safe.”

Holbrook has been busy since working on “The Host.” He is in New York working on the crime drama “A Walk Among the Tombstones” with Liam Neeson and can also be seen in the HBO film “Behind the Candelabra” later this year, in which he plays a love interest to Michael Douglas’ Liberace.

“New Mexico is a magical place for me,” he says. “This is the second chance I’ve had to film a movie there. It gets better each time that I’m there.”
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal