Foreign Spotlight: The Host

Director Bong Joon-ho’s The Host begins in the year 2000, when a morgue assistant in Korea is ordered to empty bottles of hazardous waste down a drain, even though he the boss who gives the order both know the chemicals will end up in the Han River. Two years later, fishermen are finding small mutated creatures. By 2006, a leviathan sea beast is hanging from the Han River Bridge. Among the people gathering to watch the creature is Gang-du, a good-hearted but lazy slacker who works in a food stand along the bank of the Han. Mayhem erupts moments later when the creature rushes onto land and begins to kill and devour everyone in sight. In the ensuing pandemonium, Gang-su’s young daughter Hyun-seo is grabbed by the creature and carried into the depths of the Han River.

Later, at a relief shelter for survivors of the attack, Gang-du and his father are joined by Gang-du’s brother Nam-il, an unemployed college graduate, who ridicules Gang-du’s inability to save Hyun-seo, and Gang-du’s sister Nam-joo, a national bronze medalist in archery. The military soon quarantines the family because of Gang-du came into contact with the creature’s blood, and the belief that the creature is a host to a deadly virus. Late at night, he receives a call on his cell phone from Hyun-seo, who is still alive and trapped in the creature’s lair, inside the sewers surrounding the Han. When no one believes Gang-du, it is up to him and his family to escape from quarantine, confront the beast, and rescue Hyun-seo.

I loved the Godzilla movies when I was growing up. Giant monsters battling against each other, destroying an entire city in the process. I was far too young to realize how brilliant Ishiro Honda’s original film was, or how cheesy some of the follow up films were. Unfortunately, there have been many giant monster movies made, but so few of them are good, and none of them can be considered great films, aside from the original Godzilla and King Kong. The 1998 remake of Godzilla was abysmal. Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong was very good, but forgettable. There have been a bunch of Sci-Fi Channel and direct-to-video monster films, full of cheap special effects and really a blast to watch if you don’t take them too seriously. But there hasn’t been a really great monster film, until The Host.

What makes a great monster film? Well, first of all, the monster. Brought to life by Weta Workshop (King Kong, Lord of the Rings) and The Orphanage (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sin City), it looks absolutely amazing. Bong Joon-ho’s creature is more amphibian than reptilian, and looks something like a giant mutated tadpole. It has a long, powerful tail that it uses to hang from the bridge, swing itself forward, wrap around people, or smash them. It has small rear legs, and enormous front legs/arms that it uses to kind of tear itself forward in a loping bound when it moves across land. It’s jaw opens four ways. It is green. It is ugly. It is terrifying. 

Next, the heroes. Gang-du is the main protagonist. When we first see him, he is asleep on the job, passed out with his head on the counter. He has silly, bleach blonde hair, bad posture, and is wearing baggy sweatpants. When delivering and order of fried squid, he can’t help from eating one of the legs. He is a single parent, the mother of Hyun-seo took off shortly after giving birth. But he has surprising bursts of strength, and fights for his life and for the life of Hyun-seo with a vehemence and energy possessed by no other character in the film.

Fighting alongside Gang-du are his brother, sister, and father. Nam-il, though critical and harsh on his brother, is no success story either. A drunk, embittered college graduate who can’t find a job, he feels his country owes him because of his participation in political protests while a student. Like Gang-du, Nam-il is capable, but has failed to apply himself in life. Nam-joo is a world class archer, who takes home a bronze medal on the day the creature attacks, when she should have taken home a gold. She is superior to her opponents, but hesitates too long, and her shot disqualified. Hie-bong is the family’s patriarch, still trying to raise his adult-sized children, still telling Nam-joo and Nam-il to stop picking on their brother, still using his money and resources to get the family out of trouble.

The family dynamic is what really sets up the dramatic elements of the films, and sets The Host apart from other films like it. None of the characters were successful in their lives before the arrival of the creature, and they carry their hang-ups into battle. The biggest obstacle they face is their inability to work together, to respect one another, and to realize their own weaknesses. Bong Joon-ho does not shy away from showing these aspects of his characters, nor does he shy away from showing his characters fail.

Boon Joon-ho also puts his film in a social and political context that is glaringly absent from most any other disaster, horror, or science fiction film. He goes much deeper than Spielberg did with War of the Worlds, where a comparison was drawn between the alien attack and 9/11, but failed to be anything more than a comparison – the images of the aliens destroying buildings and exterminating human life looked similar to the video footage from the streets of New York on 9/11 and the carnage that followed the fall of the World Trade Center, but the relation between the two failed to go deeper than the surface of the image. Bong Joon-ho’s film does not attempt to allegorize 9/11, but instead critiques the current U.S. administration’s military policies. Though set in Korea, the United States Armed Forces make a strong presence in the film – it is an American officer who gives the (direct) order to (indirectly) dump the chemicals into the Han River, it is the U.S. Military that deducts the creature is carrying a virus, and refuses to change this opinion even though no evidence of virus can be found (kind of how the Bush Administration decided there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraqi, and then refused to change this opinion even when no WMDs could be found), and the U.S. Military that decides the only course of action against the virus is to release ‘Agent Yellow,’ an biological counteragent that will basically destroy the ecosystem of the Han River.

The Host is a beautiful and brilliant film. Bong Joon-ho directs with an epic vision. He knows how to film a monster, knows how to shoot the big effects shots, but more importantly, he knows how to capture the small intimate moments, and how to compose both with the same precision and detail. This is the best film I’ve seen this year.