An article in Fangoria caught my eye several months back and that’s how I learned about this Korean made monster movie. Later, I watched a few trailers online and liked what I saw. Already a fan of the sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre, I am also a fan of Asian cinema and was very excited to find out that this film was going to be released in this country.
The Host opened in limited release about two months ago and finally opened nationally just recently. A friend of mine and I went to see it at our local second run theater which also doubles as an art cinema. The wait for it to come to this area had only increased my eagerness to see it. It was a rainy Tuesday evening and we ended up being the only ones in the theater. We may have even been the only customers in the entire building.
The story is standard genre fare: enormous amounts of toxic chemicals dumped into a river by callous military personnel spawn a huge, amphibious monster. After a brief setup and introduction of the main characters, the movie gets right down to business. With no preamble the creature rises from the Han River that runs through Seoul, South Korea and rampages through a crowded park on the shore. This is a scene I had read about as being one the most striking and horrifying in the movie. And it was. The appearance the creature makes is vicious and completely random, beginning and ending abruptly.
The central character of Park Gang-du bears witness to the attack as he tends his small food and drink kiosk. And then he sees his young daughter, Hyun-seo, snatched away right before his eyes by the beast as it dives back into the water.
Gang-du and his family-father, younger sister and younger brother-are taken, along with the other survivors, to a shelter where they are treated and told that the creature is the carrier of an unknown pathogen. Everyone is moved to a government facility where they are subjected to a battery of tests to determine the nature of the disease. While there Gang-du receives a brief, static-filled call from his daughter on his cell phone. She is still alive after having been dumped into a section of a storm sewer that the thing is using as its lair.
The family begins to concoct a plan to get away from the facility and find Hyun-seo. A few surreptitious calls made from their phones to some individuals of low persuasion dealing in questionable activities arranges for a van to meet them in the basement parking garage and for equipment and weapons to be waiting for them at the drop-off point. Gang-du and the other slip out of their room and make a run for it, with medical personnel and security hot on their heels. They manage to escape but it costs the family every bit of money they have on them to purchase these services. Already distraught they have no choice but to pay up. They then arm themselves and head for the Han River to start searching the shore and sewers for any sign of the creature and Gang-du’s daughter.
Unfortunately, about halfway through the film seems to start to lose its momentum and its focus and the overall tone becomes so sad, so tragic, that it makes it hard to keep watching after this point. The Parks endure situation after heartbreaking, spirit-crushing situation. My friend and I got the bad feeling that the story was building toward an unbearable climax. And we were right. Hopefully without giving anything away I can say that while the film didn’t end in the way we were expecting or hoping, which can be a good thing, it doesn’t mean that this was the way the movie should have ended. It doesn’t mean that it was the right ending. We both felt that it just ended up being overly cryptic, and thus, pointless. The ending was just flat out confusing. As the screen went dark and the credits started to roll we weren’t sure what we were supposed to take away from the viewing; if indeed we were meant to take away anything. Our feeling at the end was, I’m sorry to say, one of disappointment. We both wanted so much to enjoy the whole film.
If the filmmakers were trying to make a statement about the fact that events in the real world happen without any logic or fairness then they succeeded. As I said, being a fan of sci-fi, I liked the movie in concept and execution but I feel strongly that movies should entertain, not depress, not dampen our spirits. Movies of this genre are meant to be done in the spirit of escapism. People already know life is miserable and that things don’t always turn out the way they want. They don’t need to go to movies and be reminded of this.
Still, the movie is well written and well made. The monster effects are incredible and unsettlingly lifelike. And there are some truly horrifying and effective scenes. One of the ways in which The Host succeeds is in the presentation of the Park family. They behave as people truly would behave in an extreme situation. They bicker about trivial matters. They don’t listen to each other. They disagree on how to best handle the situation but in the end they are still a family.
