Park Hee-bong, patriarch of the Park family, owns a food stand along the Han River. Assisting him in running the business (at least when he’s not sleeping) is his adult son, Gang-du. One day, shortly after Gang-du’s daughter Hyun-seo arrives after school, a crowd of onlookers spots something strange hanging from the Han River Bridge. The dark form drops into the water and makes its way towards shore. Emerging from the water is a grotesque mutant creature. It’s the size of a city bus, and very fast. The vicious monster goes on a feeding frenzy, rushing through the panicked crowds, grabbing and swallowing victim after victim. As the horrified Park men watch helplessly, the creature makes Hyun-seo its final victim, snatching her up with its tail before diving back into the river.

The shocked witnesses are evacuated to City Hall, where a memorial display is set up. There, Gang-du is joined by his younger siblings: His sister Nam-joo, a competitive archer, and his brother Nam-il, an unemployed, heavy-drinking college grad. Their tearful reunion is short-lived, however. Everyone present is ushered away into medical quarantine. Gang-du, who was splattered with mutant blood, is singled out for extensive (i.e. gruesome and painful) testing. It seems the creature is the host (hence the title) of a deadly unknown virus. Late that night, Gang-du is shocked when he receives a phone call from Hyun-seo! His daughter is still alive in the creature’s sewer lair. When their pleas for help are dismissed, the Park family has to escape the hospital and take matters into their own hands. However, standing between them and Hyun-seo are corrupt bureaucrats, a paranoid public, a concrete labyrinth, and a deadly monster.

Over the years, Korea’s monster movie output has been sporadic and the overall quality wanting. That makes it all the more surprising that The Host is one of the best films in the genre. The reason is, it’s more than just a clichéd thriller or popcorn action movie. At its core is a dysfunctional family that must come together in the face of adversity to rescue one of their own. The tribulations they face are not strictly of the mutant variety; the film has a palpable sense of mistrust towards government and authority. The chemical-dumping incident that opens the film is based on a true event. Not only is the overbearing presence of the U.S. responsible for the creature’s birth, but America also strong-arms its way into deploying a deadly biological weapon against it. The virus scare is reminiscent of overblown concerns about SARS and “bird flu.” From national governments all the way down to the cop who refuses to do a simple check of cell-phone records, the institutions that are supposed to help people fail miserably.

Of course, even when the Park family sets out on their own, things don’t go swimmingly. This motley group are not action heroes by any stretch, despite Nam-joo’s skill with a bow and Nam-il’s experience as a former student protester. The audience comes to like and identify with these characters, but not all of them are going to survive. This makes the film powerful and involving, and keeps it rooted in reality. Far from being a downer, however, the film has a healthy dose of dark humor to lighten things up, but never at the expense of thrills or scares.

At the heart of the film is the adorable schoolgirl, Hyun-seo. She is smart, resourceful, and mature beyond her years (no doubt because her single father is more like a doofus big brother). She even becomes the guardian of a little boy who’s trapped with her in the creature’s lair. As for the monster, it’s kind of like a mutant tadpole with multiple appendages, a multi-hinged jaw, and a long prehensile tail. It can gallop swiftly after prey, and even defy gravity by swinging like a monkey under the bridge; but it’s also clumsy at times, tripping over its own webbed feet or belly-flopping onto a truck. In best kaiju fashion, it’s a cunning monster with personality. The CGI used to bring it to life is very good. It makes its first appearance at about the 12-minute mark, and starts its rampage (in broad daylight none the less) soon thereafter. It’s one of the most exciting and effective monster attacks ever filmed. There are only a few fakey shots later on that are easily overlooked given the overall quality of the production.

Beautifully filmed, with involving characters, excellent performances, good special effects, political subtext to spare, a dark sense of humor, and a nifty new monster, The Host is one of the best monster movies ever made. It’s a quantum leap in quality over Korea’s previous kaiju entry Reptilian, and it puts most American giant-critter-on-the-loose pictures like The Relic to shame. No wonder it became the biggest box-office draw in South Korean film history.

Final Analysis: Every monster movie fan should see The Host. It’s a surprisingly deep, artistic, and affecting genre effort.

Grade: A

A nefarious laboratory run by the American military dumps a load of toxic chemicals into the Han River in South Korea, resulting in the emergence of a massive monster that starts chowing down on the locals and generally just wreaking havoc. Oddly enough, the beast steals away a young girl named Hyun-seo who he doesn't harm but who he squirrels away in the sewer. The army is called in to deal with the problem, and soon word gets out that not only is the monster a flat out nasty creature but he's also carrying a lethal virus. As such, the military is forced to quarantine any citizens who have had any contact with the monster - one of whom is the abducted girl's father, Park Gang-du.

Shortly after he's been locked up, Gang-du, with some help from a few other family members, manages to break out of the quarantine and he heads deep into the sewers to try and find his daughter. What he doesn't know is that not only is she still down there, alive, but she's found and started to care for a young boy whose own father was killed by the monster. When the military finds out that the father has escaped, the make it their priority to bring him back in... an odd choice considering that the monster is still at large, leading one to wonder if maybe there's something going on that the general population has not been made aware of...

The Host isn't reinventing the wheel - in fact, it sticks to standard monster movie conventions fairly rigidly. That said, the film does a good job establishing the characters and making us care about them enough that what happens to them at least resonates with the viewer a bit. Throw in a bit of political satire and social commentary, some surprisingly effective moments of both humor and human drama and some absolutely fantastic monster scenes and you wind up with a bit of a mish-mash, but certainly a very enjoyable one.

The opening scene sets the film up nicely. After we meet the characters briefly we're immediately beaten over the head with the monster's grand entrance. Though it initially appears to be played for laughs, we soon learn that this creature is to be feared as he sends the people lounging around the park into a massive panic. It's a scene that sticks with you for a while as it blindsides you to a certain extent, tricking you into thinking that you're going to be watching a rather satirical take on the monster movie before getting down to business and delivering a very intense creature attack. Thankfully the film is able to keep up this method of deliberately toying with audience expectations throughout, meaning that the opening salvo isn't the only memorable or remarkable moment that you'll take away with you once the end credits roll.

Performances are strong across the board (as long as you watch the film in its native Korean... the dubbed version definitely hurts things) with Ah-sung Ko, who plays Hyun-seo, stealing the show. Her emotive expressions and serious delivery really hammer home what her character is going through and for a younger actress she certainly shows a lot of genuine talent in this performance. The effects, most of which are handled by way of some effective CGI, are surprisingly realistic and don't feel nearly as cold and flat out digital as so much computer work tends to. When it moves, it looks like an amphibian, and when it attacks, it is frightening. Adding to that is that the effects team has made sure that the environment in which this creature exists reacts to his movements and his actions.

While there are a few moments that are a tad melodramatic and a couple of plot holes that could have been avoided, The Host is a slightly schizophrenic but completely enjoyable film. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll jump out of your seat - but most importantly, you'll stay entertained.

Final Thoughts: The Host borrows bits and pieces from other, better movies but the end result is a movie that takes it self seriously enough to work but not so seriously that the end result isn't a whole lot of fun. Monster move fans should get a real kick out of this one and despite a few problems in the story, this is a very entertaining film.

REVIEW:
Man am I disappointed. I rarely get excited when a movie gets a lot of hype since I always end up getting, well, disappointed. But for some reason, I let all the buzz around this movie get the best of me and as time went by, my expectations grew bigger and bigger.

The movie starts out with some subtle humour as two scientists (or something) pour gallons of toxic waste into the sink. And from there on, it only got better. The creature makes his appearance after only fifteen minutes and you can really feel the panic through the screen as it chases hundreds of people over the riverbank. It's without a doubt the best monster-chase scene in cinematic history. Unfortunately, once the dust had settled, it failed to get the excitement back up, and as the movie went along, it became more and more tedious until it finally reached the point where you didn't really care what happened anymore.

The Host's main strength is also its main weakness. It tries to mix several genres together and is never able to decide what genre it wants to be. I appreciate the fact that they wanted to make it appealing to all audiences but for crying out loud, I didn't know whether I was watching a horror flick, an action movie, a drama, a black comedy or a political satire. While the subtle black humour was very effective at first and provided a couple of giggles, it eventually started feeling inappropriate as the movie tried to take a dramatic approach. This naturally didn't work very well as there is no real character development throughout the movie and we fail to connect with them. The political satire was way too obvious and felt like a cheap-shot at the American government (the Americans in the movie were either extremely stupid or complete jerks).

Now, I'll try not to bash this movie too hard though as it is a pretty good movie. I just want to underline the fact that it's not as great as people make it out to be. So before I go onto the positives, let me just get these things off my chest. The story is weak, the editing is questionable (scenes are either way too short or way too long) and there simply wasn't as much action in it as I had hoped for. The Host isn't Jaws mixed with Godzilla like many people say it is. In fact, there's very little horror and the creature never seemed to be the focus of the movie.

However, I really appreciated that this took an original approach to the creature feature genre as it's a dying subgenre which deserves better than to be stuck at the Sci-Fi channel. The movie has some scary and intense moments and, perhaps mainly due to the awesome CGI effects, every time the creature makes an appearance, the movie gets entertaining as hell. I truly believe that had they cut it down by 30 minutes or so (it's a two hour long movie) and focused more on the creature and less on the political satire and drama, I would probably have loved this movie. But they didn't. And I wasn't overly impressed by the end result.

At the end of the day, The Host is definitely a good movie, and the only reason that I'm sounding so negative is because I had expected it to be so much more than an average creature feature. I personally thought that Anacondas 2 was just as, if not even more, entertaining as The Host was. I guess that you have to know a lot about Korea's background to be able to fully enjoy this movie, and I don't so there you go. I didn't appreciate the fact that it never settled with one or two genres but had to constantly switch between five or six and I was disappointed in the fact that it wasn't as exciting as I thought that it would be. Since so many people seem to love it, I think you should check it out though, I mean, it is a good movie after all, but don't let your expectations get too high.

GORE:
Not really.

SOUNDTRACK:
Powerful, if sometimes uneven, score which does what it's intended and not a whole lot more. Pretty much what you can expect from a high budget Godzilla-wannabe.

BOTTOM LINE:
Disappointing, but still decent action/horror/comedy/political satire/drama/err... where was I going? Oh right, movie. The Host will probably fail to impress creature feature fans but entertain the mainstream audience as it never settles for one genre but tackles them all at the same time. Messy? Yes, very - but not in the right way. Entertaining? Occasionally, but not as entertaining as it should have been.