Earth has been taken over by aliens who have inhabited most of the population of the planet and act as souls for humans which means that all emotion has been stripped back and there is no war, no conflict and no anger so the whole planet lives in a state of peace.

The protagonist is Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan) who, through a weird twist of fate, is inhabited by one such host but still retains her human memories and emotions and thus can communicate with the host.

Given that it was based on a book by Stephane Meyer who also wrote the Twilight series I expected a teenage romance film based with aliens rather then vampires and to an extent this is true but it is elevated by yet another excellent performance by Ronan as the alien who finds its human side and as the human battling to stay alive in the alien body and her performance makes the torment of her character totally believable. Ronan is ably assisted by Diane Kruger as The Seeker who is like a chief of police for the aliens and it is her job to track down the remaining human survivors which she does with an unwavering purpose.

These survivors live underground in New Mexico in a community run by Jeb (William Hurt) who has developed a livable eco-system in an extinct volcano and just so happens to be related to Melanie so she knows exactly where the survivors are hiding and is torn between trusting her increasingly empathetic host and bringing her body back to her family or trying to suppress her emotions, which she is finding increasingly difficult, to preserve the safety of the survivors.

Rather than taking the premise to higher levels the movie feels like an extended Twilight Zone episode in that it’s taking itself too seriously without the script to back it up and unfortunately it reverts to the alien falls in love with generic male teen #1 while human emotions are still in love with male teen #2 (yet strangely neither of them seem bothered by this) as the central plot line.

It’s better then the Twilight movies, but not by much, and if you like your science fiction there a decent concept underneath the love triangle, although essentially it’s a re-hash of the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers premise and without the efforts of Ronan and Kruger there’s wouldn’t be a lot to recommend.

DJ speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10