REVIEW: The Host

Last Sunday evening I saw The Host (Gwoemul) at Pasadena's Laemmle Colorado One Theaters. It is putatively a horror film in Korean and English (with English subtitles) which is one of the most positively reviewed films at rottentomatoes.com ("certified fresh" with a 92% critics rating and 87% users rating). The film was co-written and directed by Bong Joon-ho and is the most commercially successful Korean film of all time, with nearly $90 million in box-office receipts, the vast majority from outside the United States.

The Host is a very enjoyable movie,with myriad influences that allow it to defy a single characterization. Although it is a "horror monster" movie (we see the mutant creature a scant 5 minutes after the opening credits, it seems) it also contains a lot of amusingly trenchant social commentary. In another sense it is a film about the intensity of familial bonds. A lot of these elements are juxtaposed together in novel ways that deepen the impact of the movie upon the viewer.

The story follows the emergence of a 20-foot mutant acquatic creature (the script implies this is the result of industrial waste dumping, which is a parody of an apparent actual incident where Americans were caught dumping formaldehyde) in the Han River which runs through downtown Seoul, South Korea. At the center of the film is the Park family, and at the center of the Park family is Hyun-seo, a cute 11-year old schoolgirl. Hyun-seo is the daughter of Gang-du, grand-daughter of Hee-bong, niece of Nam-joo and Nam-il. Hyun-seo's dad Gang-du is something of a shamefwastrel, who runs a snack shack with his dad on the banks of the Han River, while his brother Nam-il is a college graduate who shamefully is unemployed and his sister Nam-joo is a world-class (but shamefully not gold-medallist) archer. Of course, the creature abducts Hyun-seo right in front of Gang-du after devouring and dispatching a good dozen of innocent bystanders, including an American serviceman who courageously helps Gang-du in battling the monster when it begins its murderous rampage.

Thanks to ubiquitous cell phone coverage in Seoul, Hyun-seo is able to call her dad from the sewers in which the monster has dumped her, along with other half-eaten and to-be-eaten victims. Armed with the knowledge that his daughter is alive, Gang-do mobilizes the family to go into the sewers near the river to look for her.

The film borrows liberally from several Steven Spielberg classics such as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and even War of the Worlds. Although the film-making (or budget) is not as noteworthy as the movies on this list, The Host is noteworthy in its own right.

GRADE: A-.