How come it's always New York city or Tokyo being attacked by giant
monsters, anyway? Well not anymore! The greatest monster movie that I've ever seen takes place in Seoul.
A funny and ultimately heart-warming tale from one of my favourite South Korean directors, Bong Joon-ho. There are elements of political satire, family drama, and traditional monster movie throughout, but what I really enjoyed about this film was the struggle of a witless snack stand worker to rescue his adorable niece. He's called Park Gang-du, and he's played by Song Kang-ho (definitely my favourite South Korean actor) who delivers a fantastic performance, as always. I'm often blown away by how great Song is, and by his apparent range as he has turned his hand to just about every kind of role.
The film opens with a dumb American (literally cross-eyed - played by Paul Lazar, who is enjoying himself), who orders a subordinate to pour a huge amount of formaldehyde down the drain because the bottles are dusty. This fucks with the Han river, and pretty soon we've got a huge girl-snatching mutant frog-fish with a spiky vagina for a mouth on our hands.
The creature design is brilliant, by the way. One of my favourites out there, and interestingly the creature is revealed is it's full glory in it's first terror scene - an excellently choreographed crowd running around type scenario. Usually the big bad will be partially hidden for a while at least, to build suspense and what not. It's been like this for so long that showing the monster in broad daylight and clear detail in one of the opening scenes is pretty shocking, and very effective.
Soon the Americans are helping out again, by backing an 'X-Files' style web of scary lies and sending in a big toxin spewing robot that seems to have been designed by Aperture Science. The Agent Yellow is a rather clunky Vietnam reference, but I forgive them because of the brilliant way that it was portrayed, with the choking yellow mist serving as backdrop to the movie's finale.
Big picture aside, though, this film is about the somewhat quirky and messed up Park family. There's a dad/grandfather, who owns the snack stand and is nice, his two sons, one of whom is a fool (Park Gang-du) while the other is forever unhappy unemployed. There's also the daughter, who is a successful archer, and Gang-du's daughter, who is cute, smart, goes to school, and is being looked after by him and her grandfather in the snack van at the time of the movie's opening. At first they all seem so hopelessly different that it's hard to imagine them working together effectively after the girl is taken by the river monster, but as the film progresses we get a little more background on each member of the family, and our sympathy for them grows as does their sympathy for one another. The characters go through muchos trauma, but somehow the movie manages to maintain a slapstick lightheartedness for much of it's length. 'The Host' isn't afraid to kill off it's stars, and every death is very surprising, and often upsetting.
I really liked the relationship between Park Gang-du and his daughter: she's older mentally than he is, but he does his best to make her happy. He saves up pennies for a new mobile for her, though she scoffs and tells him that it'll never be enough, and he waits around all day for her to get home from school and play with him. The whole family is really very funny, and their interactions are a joy to watch. The casting, acting, and script of this film are all spot on with very few exceptions.
And the little visual jokes are dotted around all over the place, encouraging us to ask ourselves "just what is it exactly that I'm watching, here?" and creating a bizzare atmosphere that western cinema can only come close too with movies like 'Fargo' and 'Little Miss Sunshine'. At one point a government agent is walking along, and he trips and falls over, before jumping to his feat and awkwardly checking to see if anyone noticed. In another scene a group of commuters wait at a red man, and all nervous attention is on the man who is coughing (the initial government cover-up invents a new kind of flu that is apparently rampant). The man clears his throat and spits into a big puddle at the side of the curb, before a bus passes and splashes everyone to horrified cries and curses. It's simultaneously huge amounts of fun and rather depressing, and I strongly recommend watching it.
The Host: 88.5