Creature Feature or Social Commentary? The Host

Sorry for the delay. I was in a car accident the first weekend of the New Year, where my vehicle was totalled. Fortunately, everyone was all right. Dealing with paperwork and getting a new car has preoccupied my time, but don't think I haven't been watching movies. No siree!

We'll start off with what was the top box office draw in South Korea in 2006, a film called The Host. It's a difficult movie to label -- it isn't a horror film, nor, in spite the cover shot, is it a monster movie. It does share many traits of a classic film, Godzilla, in that the focus is not on the beast but what created it, the victims, and the society it affects. The Host is without a doubt one of the more unique cinema offerings that South Korea has produced in a few years. The story begins with a look inside a US military lab in Seoul, where an assistant is ordered to dump vast amounts of formadelyde into the sink, which is eventually emptied into the Han River. A couple of years later some fishermen come across a weird species of reptile, and disgusted, toss it back into the sea. Later, a man commits suicide by diving into the river from a bridge. We then focus on a man and his father who work a vending house along the Han River, selling food to people who come to picnic or for lunches. Song Kang Ho plays Gang-du, the vender's son who seems to be a good for nothing slacker who sleeps all the time. He is divorced, and has a thirteen year old daughter who returns from school, disgusted that for parent's day her drunken uncle was the only family member who could attend. The daughter has an aunt who is a professional sportsman, an archer who wins bronze in a televised championship. While correcting a botched order, Gang-du goes to the riverside, where he finds the people staring at something underneath the bridge. To his astonishment, it is a huge mammal hanging upside down like a bat, which then dives into the river. It takes some food tossed to it in the river, then comes out of the water and begins to devour the people. Chaos ensues, and Gang-du rushes back to the vending house, and grabs his daughter as she comes out to see what is going on. In the frenzy, they fall and lose contact. She is taken by the monster and dragged into the sea. The survivors of the incident are later gathered at city hall, in disbelief and grieving for their lost loved ones. There Gang-du's family come together and grieve over his daughter's death. A man in a yellow protective suit comes in, and warns that they are all going to be decontaminated and placed under examination, as the creature apparently infected a US soldier who was at the scene. While at the hospital, Gang-du receives a garbled cell phone call from his daughter -- somehow she survived, and was at the bottom of a huge sewer. The family, while each having personal difficulties in the past, band together and escape from the hospital, and head for the Han River. With the help of some local gangsters they get some weapons and a sewer map, and they head into the vast sewer system, looking for the daughter. They find the creature and attack it, but they only manage to annoy it, and in the fight the father is killed. Gang-du is captured again by the military, but his brother and sister escape. The brother finds out the location of the phone call, with the aid of a friend who turns around and betrays him by informing the officials, but he escapes. The sister, armed with her crossbow, is given the daughter's coordinates and goes into the tunnel to find her. She immediately runs into the creature, and is knocked unconscious. Gang-du, after a terrifying series of examinations, takes a nurse hostage and flees the holding area, which happens to be near the river. He steals a car and heads off to the sewers, where he runs into his family again. The daughter, realizing that she is in a repository for the creature's victims, is searching for a way out. A boy who was part of a recent deposit, survives. She takes care of him, and makes a rope out of the victims' clothes to try to escape. But the creature appears, and they hide in a little hole that the creature can't get into. Later it sleeps, and the daughter is determined to get out, but climbng on the creature to the rope and to safety. She almost makes it, but the creature awakes, and devours the children. It confronts the family later on, but Gang-du and his siblings are ready: the sister fires a Molotov cocktail arrow and sears the creature, Gang-du himself delivers the death blow with a metal pole. The children are coughed up; however, only the boy survives. The virus is later admitted to be a hoax, and political apologies are made. The boy ends up living with Gang-du at the vending house.

What makes The Host a unique and refreshing film for me is that there are no clichés, no familiar elements that one would expect. It is a well thought out film. Perhaps we are to infer that formaldehyde, when dumped in large quantities, will make monsters, or maybe not. But the idea is that of careless waste (in particular by a foreign element, the US military) of toxic substances could affect out natural resources. There is a lot of political stuff going on, but it is all in the background. What is more unnerving is the handling of a major disaster by the authorities, in managing and containing exposure to prevent outbreak. The military is shown but not as integral to the plot as the doctors and disease control agents who create chaos of their own. I think more than any other film from South Korea do I get some sense of the American presence in their culture, and how they can be perceived as both ally and a friend who has long outstayed his welcome. Gang-du and his dysfunctional family make for unique heroes in a movie -- they all have their problems, and at times don't get a long with each other, but in the end they work together to avenge the daughter's death. The direction is terrific -- direct, even paced and providing unusual twists. It clocks in at just under two hours. The Host lives up to its hype -- there has been tremendous interest in the film festivals and on the internet -- a well done film. Check it out!