The Host
Review by Peter Syslo

I had high hopes for this movie and honestly, I have to say that I am a little disappointed. I really wanted to like this movie; it had a cool premise, an interesting beginning, and it had that “exotic” flavor to it. But, that is the gamble you take when you pick up a DVD at the video store, without any prior knowledge of the movie – sometimes it works out and you discover a “gem”, other times it results in a movie that is just “okay”. I wasn’t crazy about THE HOST (2006); it just left me with that “eh” feeling. There are some likeable aspects of the film but overall, I just couldn’t “get into it”.

THE HOST is a film from South Korea ; it is directed by Bong Joon-Ho and it is written by Bong Joon-Ho, Hah Joon-Won, and Baek Chul-Hyun. It stars Song Kang Ho, Byun Hee Bong, Park Hae Il, Bae Doo Na, and Ko A Sung.

The film is about a mutant creature that terrorizes a community around the Han River, in South Korea . The creature (like a giant tadpole/squid) wreaks havoc, kidnaps the hero’s daughter, and the creature is thought to be the cause of a strange virus. Most of the film focuses on the hero trying to escape from medics (who think that he has the virus) and on the quest to find his daughter. The film concludes as the hero, and his family, try to save his daughter and try to destroy the creature once and for all.

As I said before, I really wanted to like this film more than I actually did. I don’t know, but I think that the creature genre is a really tough genre, because it is so tired – at least in the USA . Maybe in South Korea they have not seen much of this type of film, but I know that we are inundated with these creature films – at least once a week, courtesy of the Sci-Fi channel. I say that it is a tough genre because it is tough to make a believable and scary creature flick. It seems that these types of films wind up being very good or very bad, and a few, like this one, fall in between. This was the main problem that I had with THE HOST - it contained ideas that I have seen many times, in various films. From the American standpoint, it was basically the same plot as any creature film, with a different creature, and with a few twists here and there.

One of the other problems that I had was that I felt that too much was going on, at times, and the direction of the film (and also the suspense) seemed to dissipate. I like that it is a cross-genre film, bringing in different influences, but it just seemed to lose its identity in places. One moment it was a monster movie, the next it was a virus/medical horror film, the next it was a political film – I didn’t feel that it all “gelled” to make a solid, well-paced story. Also, I felt that the creature was shown too early in the film and that seemed to take away some of the suspense, as well. It is that “JAWS” syndrome – it was a happy accident that the shark didn’t work well – if they showed the shark early on, it may have blown the whole power of the film.

However, there are some things that I did like about the film. First, it was beautifully filmed and the atmosphere was really conducive to the “idea” of the creature (the river and the surrounding sewer ways). Second, The CGI and the creature effects were actually pretty good – there were a few instances where the creature looked “fake” but overall, the CGI coupled with animation/mechanics made the creature believable. Third, the acting was pretty good but there was also some “goofiness” present – and that was not a bad thing, strangely; the “goofiness” sort of fit, like in an old GODZILLA film.

Finally, I like the idea that Asian horror is starting to produce films with storylines other than revenge/ghosts. Yeah, the creature genre may be tired here, but I applaud these filmmakers for trying to doing something different within Asian films.

Cutting to the chase: I just couldn’t get into the movie, but maybe it’s because I am burned out on the “monster movie”- I don’t know. It reminded me of NIGHTWATCH – I so wanted to like the movie, but I just couldn’t get into that either. I respect THE HOST and I will try to watch it again at some point, but for now, if I want complete satisfaction with a creature feature, I will go with JAWS, ALLIGATOR, or THE THING.