The Host (***)

? South Korea’s all-time box-office champion is a monster movie that, like the original Godzilla, has pretensions of social commentary. Extrapolated from an actual incident in 2000 when an American military employee poured a large quantity of formaldehyde down the drain, the story here is that chemicals released into the Han River cause a mutation that unleashes a truck-size amphibious creature thought to carry a deadly virus on the local populace.
+ The computer-rendered beast, looking like a reasonably realistic version of a fish with legs, is pretty good, and its initial rampage when it terrorizes the populace is mostly terrific, but the best thing about the movie overall is the characters. If you go by movies like Anaconda or Primeval, you’d expect that there’ll be, say, a brainy female journalist, a cocky male adventurer, a tourist or three, and assorted sidekicks who will get offed, one-by-one, until the two most attractive characters are left to kill the beast and probably hook up. But nope, here we get an ordinary family of five. The father’s narcoleptic and not too bright, the grandfather’s old, the brother’s a drunk, and even the sister, a competitive archer, compromises her superior skills by being seemingly afraid to pull the trigger. It’s this goofy lot that has to outwit the government trying to quarantine them and locate the youngest one, the daughter who’s been carried off by the beast. Just as writer-director Bong Joon-ho subverted the conventions of the serial-killer mystery (a little like Zodiac did) with his last movie, Memories of Murder, he injects a similar note of melancholia into this most unlikely vehicle for a family drama.
- After the beast’s opening rampage, things get a little too calm as the plot plays out. Also, some of the attempts at humor are on the hokey side. As for the plot, it didn’t bother me that the American government and military are villains (the Korean authorities fare no better, in any case), but if Bong had come up with a mad scientist instead it would have seemed only slightly more cartoonish and one-dimensional.
= *** Most of the action occurs at the beginning and end. So people looking for another King Kong, or even another Godzilla, might be disappointed if they start hoping the beast will start tearing up downtown Seoul. I expect the planned American remake will be more to their liking. I was on the fence about this one, but I’m giving it an upgraded rating for having a surprisingly poignant conclusion that, though containing familiar elements, has one really big surprise.

IMDB link

reviewed 3/16/07