The Host

The many American studios vying for remake rights to Bong Joon-ho’s masterful blockbuster, The Host, seem to be missing a big part of the picture here. The film—while on the surface an old-fashioned King Kong-esque monster movie—is very unforgiving to U.S. foreign policies (and otherwise), to the point of bordering on being anti-American. Despite this, it’s managed to gross over a million here, in limited theatrical release. This is one I pray opens in my area, because (Canadian that I am) seeing it with a crowd of the flick’s targets would be quite an experience.

Right off the bat, Bong refuses to mince cinematic words by having a creepy, cartoonishly unreasonable American man (played by the dad in Junebug) instruct his nice, sensible Korean assistant to dump a whole lot of formaldehyde down the drain—knowing, and acknowledging, that it will ultimately end up in the Han River. It’s a moment that would be scoff-inducing and cheesy in its bold-faced unfairness, if it weren’t clearly done in satirical humor.

A few years later, those actions have produced a massive mutant sea (well, river) monster hell-bent on chowing down at the all-you-can-eat buffet local onlookers and unsuspecting tourists. The story narrows its focus (storywise) from here, onto a hapless ragtag family: an immature father, working for his own father at a small food stand, to support his preteen daughter, and said immature father’s brother (a college grad) and sister (a professional archer). They band together, in a touching display of bickering loyalty and constantly thwarted heroics, when their daughter/granddaughter/niece is snatched by the creature.

Unfortunately, authorities—by way of received orders from the U.S.A—are saying anyone who comes in contact with the mutant-fish needs to be quarantined in order to contain a deadly, highly-contagious (and highly-suspicious in its lack of details) virus. Before long, the entire family finds themselves forced to break out of a government hospital because no one believes that they’ve got a girl to save. The Kafkaesque absurdity on display as the surgical-mask sporting doctors shuffle around, administering anonymous medicine, and giving insincere reassurances, is nightmarishly gutsy—and executed awfully well.

The sometimes metaphorical, sometimes literal political commentary here is viciously funny, and more than a little disturbing. It’s this—even aside from the exhilarating, authentically thrilling popcorn fun at hand—that makes The Host deserving of the praise its been honored with, and then some. It’s the sort of film that gets me, at the risk of sounding extremely dorky and Ebertish, excited about movies. And relieved to be Canadian.