The Host (2006)

By Mr. Tropnevad

Summary

A young girl is snatched away from her father by an unknown creature that emerges from the River Han to wreak havoc on Seoul. Her family sets out to retrieve the girl from the monster and not even the government or the creature will stop them from bringing the young girl home.


Expectations going in

I have been interested in watching this since last year when I saw it available on instant Netflix and I had it in my queue, but never could bring myself to watching it. One of our fans asked us to review it, so I figured I would go ahead and give it a shot. Before I go on I have never seen a Korean movie before, but I have seen my fair share of foreign movies.

The Bad

I think the movie was confused at what it wanted to be when it came to a genre. I already knew it was a monster movie, so naturally that gives it a sci-fi and horror element. Then over time it becomes a dark comedy and a drama. There are so many genres in this that I think it causes problems which ultimately hurts the movie. I think that if they were able to stick with sci-fi and horror it could have been an excellent movie. I can understand adding a few comedic scenes to relieve the tension of the film, but if it becomes too silly like this movie does it hurts the overall feeling of the movie.

During the middle of the movie I found myself bored, but not for very long. The problem was while I was bored I started to see problems within the movie that I won’t be mentioning due to how minor they are. I just wanted to point out that it does slow down and you could find yourself seeing some of the problems. Don’t worry though, because the film picks back up.

The Good

If you do watch this you might think it is a B movie and when I checked the budget for it I found that the film cost eleven million dollars to make and it made around ninety million dollars at the box office. I am not familiar with the Korean film industry and by an American standard that is a remarkable amount of money to make on a movie that did not have a big budget. So don’t go into this thinking it is a B movie even though it seems like it by American standards when it comes to story and quality of the movie.

The film does a great job of showing you how the monster was created and I was hooked within the first few minutes of the movie. This entire scene is based off of a true story that happened except for the monster of course. The writer did an excellent job of creating an entire story from this incident that happened. Immediately after the pouring of the chemical down the drain we get a idea of what the creature looks like even though it is a baby. At this point I started to think hey what does this monster look like and the film maker better not make me wait another forty minutes till I see the creature. You do not have to wait long, because about five minutes later we are introduced to Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) and his family. Then after we get the idea of the family we immediately go straight to the creature all grown up.

While watching this I kept thinking that Park Gang-du was a bumbling fool and at times I became annoyed by him and the way the movie was portraying him. Over time though a part of me started to like the character, because I felt bad that he lost his daughter to the creature, but his father informs his other children about why Park Gang-du acts the way he does. I believe this was put into the movie so the viewer could better understand that he is not just comic relief. He cares for his daughter and doesn’t care what anyone says or does to him, because he will stop at nothing to get her back.

The first glimpse close up shot of the creature made me think that it looked like an alien from the movie Alien. Over time though with more views of the creature and several more close up shots I started to see more features of it and I thought it looked like a mixture of creatures. After the movie was over I looked up to see what company created the creature and found out that it was Weta Workshop. For those of you unfamiliar with Weta Workshop they have done the special effects on dozens of movies and one you all know is The Lord of The Rings trilogy.

The first forty minutes of this movie held my attention and I wanted to see more of the creature attacking everyone. The movie keeps you interested in Park Gang-du and his family by giving them back stories such as the old man is serious and is kind of a bad ass. The daughter is an excellent archer and the film makers use her skills in a few scenes of the movie. The brother of Park Gang-du is educated and brings what he can to the family in their time of need. I found everyone’s skill interesting and I was surprised how the film makers use all of their abilities to try and rescue the little girl. I did find problems though in those first forty minutes, but they were so minor I was able to overlook them.

The opening attack scene with the creature is sensationally directed and it gives you the idea of how dangerous the creature is and it gives the premise of the story. I was hoping that the movie would have more scenes similar to this and while the attacks scenes in the rest of the movie are similar to this one I thought the opening scene did a great job of reeling me in to watch more.

Overall Thoughts

I had a discussion with Zentilack over my feelings with this movie and he informed me that some Korean movies are silly like this and you just have to look past the minor problems. I figured I would either watch it again or think about it for a day or two before I wrote the review. About a day after I watched it I realized that I actually did enjoy this movie more than I thought and I wanted to watch it again, but due to a busy schedule I did not have time.

Overall I know I will eventually watch this again and I am sure I will enjoy it more. Now I know you’re saying to yourself, you had problems at first, but now you like it? Yes, my problems with it were due to never seeing a Korean film before, so naturally I was thinking it would be a little more serious like the Koreans are and not silly. Even though I had issues I would recommend you stream this on instant Netflix like I did. I know when the price drops on the blu-ray I would buy it.

While writing this review I looked up some information on the movie and discovered that several American critics put it on their top ten lists for 2007 and the movie has won over eighteen awards and had an additional ten nominations. Wikipedia claims that a video game is planned based off the movie, but I am sure it will only be available in the Asian market. There is supposed to be a sequel to come out this year and Universal Studios is or was interested in making an American remake of this. If you like monster movies give it a shot and I think you will be surprised at how decent this movie is.

Overall- Stream via Netflix