THE HOST with the most

site | trailer | BFFF2006Not your typical horror flick or creature feature. In fact, I've seen it pushed as a GODZILLA from South Korea, but gotta say, it's just as much LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE as it is monster movie. A thoroughly enjoyable family drama that happens to be set against an assault on the city by a horrible man-eating beastie.

The setup... In 2000, on the orders of a high-ranking prima donna, a military medical facility disposes of it's inventory of toxic materials in the Han River, which runs through Seoul. In 2004, a couple of fisherman encounter an unusual multi-legged creature in the river. In 2006, a man's corpse is pulled from the Han River...

Correction. HALF a man's corpse is pulled from the Han river...

I gotta say, it's pretty damn impressive the way the movie jumps right into its monster madness.

On the day that the half-body is found in the Han, at a different spot along the river, a crowd of gawkers assembles at the river's edge to watch a strange amphibious-looking beastie hanging out under a nearby bridge. As they watch, the creature slides into the water and swims close to shore. The curious onlookers find that their offerings of snacks, chucked into the water, are quickly snatched by the beast's tentacles and webbed claws. After a hail of snack items, tho, the crowd's attention seems to drive the creature away.

As the crowd begins to break up, one man turns away and looks down the shoreline... He finds himself paralyzed by a mind-numbing sight. The camera turns to follow his eyes... In broad and bright daylight, a sunny weekday afternoon, in a park along the river, we see the giant beastie stretch his many legs in a stomp down the boardwalk, trampling and swatting aside picnickers, snatching up school children, as well as sucking down the fleeing Seoul citizenry.

Pretty damn impressive. No messing around.

I think it was JAWS 4 (which I've never seen) that had the tag line, "This time, it's personal." Well, it was a ridiculous notion for that movie, but it pretty well describes the way things play out in THE HOST. You *think* it's all about a monster terrorizing the city (and okay, it *is*), but most of the film lives at the scope and level of the dysfunctional Park family of three generations dealing with the monster's abduction of their youngest.
With their daughter/niece/granddaughter in the monster's clutches, the aunt, uncle, father, and grandfather must overcome their long-standing issues to save her. Grandfather typically has to play referee for the quarrelsome and resentful children. With one brother a loving single pop, but also a slackerly screw-up, the other brother a disgruntled unemployed university graduate and activist, their sister an Olympic hopeful who prefers to take things on at her own pace, which is typically too slow for everyone else, and none of them married... well, there's a lot of sibling politics involved in anything resembling a family affair.

There's also a bigger backdrop of how the Korean national government, and then foreign and U.S. powers, decide to deal with the emergence of this biological threat or mutation. American experts reveal that the creature is a host for a potentially greater threat, a never-before-seen virus that quickly kills patient zero, the first soldier to encounter the monster.

Controlling a potential outbreak means quarantining the Park family, who have all been exposed directly or indirectly to the creature after its initial attack. This ends up pitting the family against the military in their search for their little girl. Cuz it wasn't difficult enough trying to hunt a maneating beast in the extensive sewer tunnels that lead to and from the river.

The cast is excellent, and I hafta say, I'm totally digging Kang-ho Song, who plays Kang-du Park, the father. I am a fan. I've seen him in JSA and MEMORIES OF MURDER and he is... I dunno, he's like Buddha if he was up for kicking people's asses. He goes deep with everything emotional in a tough-guy way. A Korean Toshiro Mifune.

The creature itself is f'ing cool—grotesquely toothed and multi-mandibled, tentacled, slinky, shiny wet, powerful, graceful and sleek.

I think I may hafta do a spoilery write-up in another post about all the good ideas and fun in this film.

I'm gonna close this up with the email pitch for THE HOST I spammed out to the poor unfortunate souls who naively let their email addresses slip. =)
THE HOST is a Godzilla-sized monster movie import from South Korea. A toxic spill into the Han River many years ago today yields a mutated terror that stalks the river's waterways and ultimately rises to attack the city. The film's director also helmed MEMORIES OF MURDER, an IN COLD BLOOD-ish look at the investigation of a vicious murder on the outskirts of a remote country town. The reason for and methods enlisted in the investigation are cruel and harsh, but the film manages to coerce more than a few comical and touching moments out of the characters involved. I expect that THE HOST will show an unexpectedly humorous and thoughtful vulnerable underbelly as well. Quality. =) Plays at 7.30pm and also Sunday at 5pm. Check it out!

Keep on keepin on~

p.s. I saw the 5.30 BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING and stuck around for the 7.30 HOST. Dan showed up to catch it with me. I'm planning on going back for more tomorrow (Sunday) night with Rowan and Glen. I'm hoping that they'll both stick around for DARKON, too.