Movie Review: The Host

If there's one film that will plant South Korean cinema into the mind of the American public, The Host is it. Bong Joon-ho's lively feature provides all the thrills and sensation of the average American summer spectacle, except that it does so while still remaining a good movie. It's got heart, hilarity, triumph and tragedy as it gives us a fractured family that finally sets aside their differences and unites towards a common goal. It's also got a giant mutant fish-monster that tries to eat everything in its path.

Still with me? That's the kind of film that The Host is - able to shift tones on a moment's notice (often within the same scene), Bong uses all his formidable talents to bring respect to a disreputable genre. And thanks to his sure hand, somehow it all comes together.

The genesis of this giant mutant fish-monster comes in the year 2000 prologue, when an American government official, over the objections of his Korean subordinate, orders the disposal of several hundred bottles of formaldehyde (they were dusty). Flash forward to the present, when the monster crawls out of the Han River one fine summer day and wreaks a whole ton of havoc.

This is a spellbinding sequence - the first glimmer of the rampage comes when layabout snack-booth merchant Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) casually turns to his left and sees the beast running full bore at him, trampling or swallowing everyone in between, and the rest of the sequence has that same disbelieving, half-glimpsed quality about it. Most effective is the first tail whip, which would be played as a major shock-cut in Hollywood but here is viewed from a distance, which makes it somehow both more horrifying and weirdly funny.

The attack is all the more impressive for coming not fifteen minutes into a two-hour film; in lieu of arduous story setup, Bong quickly introduces the members of the Park family and jumps straight into the action, leaving the rest to be filled in on the fly as the remainder of the film proceeds. A significant portion of the family is elsewhere at the time—Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na) is on television attempting to win a gold medal in archery, while Nam-il (Park Hae-il) we learn of only in Gang-du's conversation with his daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-sung) about his showing up at parent-teacher day in place of the shiftless, borderline-narcoleptic Gang-du.

Among other things, Bong demonstrates with The Host that he's adept at the art of storytelling shorthand. In this early scene alone, he gives us quick sketches of five characters without feeling expository or leaving the snack shack run by Gang-du's father Hie-bong (Byoen Hie-bong), while simultaneously emphasizing the spatial separateness that is reflected by the family's emotional divisions. Both of these gulfs are closed in short order by a horrific event, and that's when the meat of The Host arrives on the scene.

It's a hell of an event, too: During the opening monster mash, Gang-du loses sight of where he's going, stumbles and accidentally lets go of Hyun-seo's hand. Just as he realizes his error, he turns to see Hyun-seo being swept up and carried away by the monster's tail.

Article Author: Steve Carlson

Steve Carlson, the proprietor of The Ongoing Cinematic Education of... since 2002, neither conducts electricity nor talks to reptiles. However, he knows someone who does both.

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