The Host - Don't Mention The War...

It's almost as though these 'industrious little fellows' (to quote the horrifically un-PC Jeremy Clarkson) set out to answer the question 'just how obvious can we possibly make a political allegory?' The answer to this question is very obvious. In fact, the anti-American sentiment (though this does simplify the whole film somewhat) was so latent that even the North Koreans managed to praise its virtues from the mountaintops. Hmmm.


When an American scientist pours hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde down his lab drain, the end result is a big ol' ugly-as-sin fish monster that rises from the deep and decides it likes the tang of human flesh. Delicious. Our plot follows dim-witted Park Gang-du, who manages to lose his daughter to the creature's tail/appendage (see poster on left). In the aftermath, Gang-du and his family are captured by the government under the pretence that the creature carries a deadly virus. But - shock horror! - Hyun-seo  calls them, still very much alive and trapped in a sewage drain along the river somewhere. So the whole family - his old father, his alcoholic brother and his archery champion sister - tag along to rescue the little one, plagued by useless government intervention along the way. When plans to gas the creature with 'Agent Yellow' (totally not suss...) threaten the little one's life, it becomes a family road-trip satirical horror comedy racing against the clock. Game on.

It's a creature film primarily, so does the creature cut the mustard? Yes. Yes it does. It's not really a spoiler because it's revealed so early on, but it's a big cross between a fish, a dinosaur and a tadpole with a handy tail. I dunno why, but I actually enjoyed the fact that they didn't muck around with the big reveal - it was very much: 'here it is, enjoy it, now watch it mess up these people's lives'. That was refreshing. Does our amphibious friend bring the necessary scares? Meh. Sometimes. But it's function is more than a few jumps (not to say that there aren't any scares - I leapt at least twice), as it's the catalyst that explores the fractures within the family that we follow, and it's these harsh realities that are often most frightening. Our cast are fairly accomplished in Korean cinema and they achieve good results here, handling the frequent switches between bizarre asides and earnest emotion with a great sure-footedness. On that note, the writing is truly different to anything you've ever seen before, transitioning between satirical, surreal, emotional and suspenseful at a rate of knots. But as I said before, maybe its political commentary was a little to transparent for my tastes, though I stress that these are very much my tastes and others may prefer their social messages applied with a liberal brush.

The Host wasn't the masterpiece that I was expecting given the unbelievably strong critical response and its megabucks at the box office. However it's definitely not a bad film - overtly enjoyable, sometimes scary and palpably silly. So for me, it's sitting on about a mid-range 13 out of 19 abducted Asian youths. Apologies for my lateness with this review, but I'm currently sitting in the middle of uni exams, so I'll be back to my usual, happy-posting self in about a week (fingers crossed).