Poor Gang-du! He toils ineffectively with his gruff dad in their snack bar on the banks of the Han River in Seoul, failing to even stay awake at the register. Is he dim-witted? Or just lazy? Maybe a little of both, but he has one redeeming quality: he loves his daughter Hyun-seo more than anything else. He squirrels away dimes and quarters here and there, saving them in an empty soup can, to buy her a new cell phone one day.
Then, sunbathers and people lunching on the riverbank spot something hanging off the Wonhyo bridge. It glistens and unfolds and slips silently into the muddy water.
Caught up in the crowd’s curiosity, Gang-du finds himself at the edge of the Han … watching with the others as an amorphous black shape nears. He throws a beer can in the water. It floats, then disappears with a splash. Then the black shape is gone.
What is it? Is it dangerous? People stare at each other, then out at the brown water, asking questions and shrugging.
Then the screaming starts. Gang-du whirls around, and – is he the only one that sees it? Something bigger than a truck is on the shore, something black and slimy but incredibly fast, and it’s rushing towards them all, gaining speed and leaving bloodied bodies in its wake. After a moment’s hesitation, the crowd dissolves in frenzied panic, Gang-du among them, dodging this monster that’s tearing through them.
The thing kills its way through the riverbank, selecting victims at random to ingest (to be regurgitated for later feeding), and Gang-du and an American manage to wound it while saving the lives of some helpless folks trapped in a camper. Gang-du escapes down the embankment, but the American … not so lucky.
Hyun-seo! His daughter! Where is she? Gang-du races back to the snack bar and finds her, seizing her hand, pulling her out of the path of the enraged monster. He stumbles, grabs her hand again, then manages to reach safety – only to find that it’s not his daughter’s hand, but another child’s, he’s holding.
Then, a hundred feet away, Hyun-seo is looking at him, puzzled, and quite suddenly the creature’s tentacle-tail wraps around her and she’s pulled with it into the Han river as it flees to its hidden lair …
Then, sunbathers and people lunching on the riverbank spot something hanging off the Wonhyo bridge. It glistens and unfolds and slips silently into the muddy water.
Caught up in the crowd’s curiosity, Gang-du finds himself at the edge of the Han … watching with the others as an amorphous black shape nears. He throws a beer can in the water. It floats, then disappears with a splash. Then the black shape is gone.
What is it? Is it dangerous? People stare at each other, then out at the brown water, asking questions and shrugging.
Then the screaming starts. Gang-du whirls around, and – is he the only one that sees it? Something bigger than a truck is on the shore, something black and slimy but incredibly fast, and it’s rushing towards them all, gaining speed and leaving bloodied bodies in its wake. After a moment’s hesitation, the crowd dissolves in frenzied panic, Gang-du among them, dodging this monster that’s tearing through them.
The thing kills its way through the riverbank, selecting victims at random to ingest (to be regurgitated for later feeding), and Gang-du and an American manage to wound it while saving the lives of some helpless folks trapped in a camper. Gang-du escapes down the embankment, but the American … not so lucky.
Hyun-seo! His daughter! Where is she? Gang-du races back to the snack bar and finds her, seizing her hand, pulling her out of the path of the enraged monster. He stumbles, grabs her hand again, then manages to reach safety – only to find that it’s not his daughter’s hand, but another child’s, he’s holding.
Then, a hundred feet away, Hyun-seo is looking at him, puzzled, and quite suddenly the creature’s tentacle-tail wraps around her and she’s pulled with it into the Han river as it flees to its hidden lair …
The Host (2006) is hands-down the best monster movie I’ve seen in the past couple of years. The director, Bong Joon-ho, in a sharp break with Hollywood movies of the past thirty years or so (see Alien, 1979), is not afraid to show his monster early – the creature makes an appearance 13 minutes into the movie. Yes, Spielberg’s tripods were more awe-inspiring, or should I say, dread-inspiring, but that movie was populated by jerks. Gang-du and his family of eccentrics who wind up doing very personal battle with the beast were actually quite endearing. The special effects of the Host, which fall approximately midway between Spielberg’s hundred-million-dollar extravaganzas and a typical SciFi Channel movie, are convincing enough that I wasn’t thinking about them.
The Host broke all box-office records when it was released, becoming the highest-grossing film ever in South Korea, and won best film and best actor at the Asian Film Awards. If you’re into this genre, see it. See it. It’s subtitled, and I’d recommend viewing it that way for a more authentic experience as the English overdubbing tends to sound kinda silly. Oh, and see it!
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