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THE HOST
Directed by: Bong Joon-ho.
Written by: Bong, Hah Joon-won & Baek Chul-hyun.
Produced by: Choi Yong-bae.
Director of Photography: Hyung-ku Kim.
Edited by: Kim Hyung-goo.
Music by: Lee Byeong-woo.
Released by: Magnolia Pictures.
Language: Korean with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: South Korea/Japan. 119 min. Rated R.
With: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doo-na & Ko A-sung.

This South Korean/sci-fi/monster/revenge movie is based on a true story. Somewhat. The opening sequence shows an American military official in control of an unknown facility commanding, on a whim, his disapproving Korean subordinate to dump bottle after bottle of formaldehyde down the drain, which empties directly into the Han River. That part is true. The part about the angry carnivorous squid-like monster the spill created five years later is not.

We first see the creature asleep in plain sight, hanging off a bridge like a giant Predator-possum. He wakes up, causes mayhem, kills a lot of people, and mysteriously takes a teenage girl, Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung), captive and deposits her in what appears to be the monster’s bathroom – an enormous hole in the floor of an industrial space where it regurgitates skeletal remains and the freshly dead (or presumptively dead) from its belly.

Hyun-seo manages to find a signal on her cell phone lasting long enough to ensure her father, grandfather, aunt, and uncle that she’s alive, and they begin a campaign to rescue her. But their mission is hindered by the Korean and American officials who have shut down Seoul, barricaded the river, and have placed the entire area under martial law. After a new biochemical (Agent Yellow) is released on the creature as a last resort, the plot becomes more about a global protest against the use of the lethal chemical, with a message blunter than Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke.

This is an interesting film for a number of reasons. First, it shows you in lengthy, unflinching shots the monster in full visage, a masterpiece of special effects and physical craftsmanship produced by visual f/x supervisor Kevin Rafferty (Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace) and the team at The Orphanage (Sin City, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).

Director Bong Joon-ho goes to great lengths depicting a city clamped down with barricades and frenzied fear. The government claims anyone who touched the creature has been infected by a lethal virus. Later, it’s revealed by the United Nations that South Korea was covering for America. It’s been widely known by both governments that the cause for the mutated creature was most likely the formaldehyde incident (which was similarly covered-up). In American films, the supernatural occurs only to the select few, and no one believes them when they try to tell others. It’s happened a lot lately in Asian genre films and even 28 Days Later and the last War of the Worlds remake, but there’s something believable about the public and government reaction to The Host’s creature.

The third aspect that makes this film something that Quentin Tarantino is most likely to Netflix are the unbelievably fleshed-out characters and a somewhat believable explanation for the monster, albeit rooted largely in environmentalist metaphors. Rather than being the stereotypes and stock players of horror films, Eastern or Western, each member of Hyun-seo’s family is a fully-realized individual.

But does that make it a good monster flick or just different from the rest? Even though the characters are layered with history, unusual personalities, and detail, it feels like there’s a dramatic family story competing for screen time with a preternatural Green Peace monster epic. It’s strangely distracting. When watching the film, I wanted Bong to choose one genre or the other. And while showing the monster in full view makes the film more about environmental politics and social responsibility rather than straightforward horror, it takes away all the fear that such a masterful work of CGI could have otherwise instilled.

All in all, if you’re the kind of person who owns Frankenstein and have always felt like you could write a benchmark critical masterwork on “the monster” in cinema history, then you should see this movie. But if you’re going for thrills, nonstop action, and the simple pleasures of supernatural rollercoaster rides, this isn’t for you. Zachary Jones
March 9, 2007