The Host (2006)

On a Han River bank in broad daylight, where people are idly passing the time, a giant creature leaps into ordinary life. The Host seizes the audience at once with this shocking first appearance, but director Bong Joon-ho’s real interest is not the monster’s attack itself. Through the society that flails in confusion after the creature appears, and a family abandoned within that chaos, he tells a far larger story.

What it’s about — A double struggle against a creature and a system

Park Gang-du, who runs a snack stand beneath a Han River bridge, seems a little slow. One day a creature emerges from the river and attacks people indiscriminately, and Gang-du’s young daughter Hyun-seo is dragged off by it. Everyone assumes Hyun-seo is dead, but Gang-du receives a phone call telling him she is alive. From here the film develops into a chase in which Gang-du, his father, and his siblings break through the government’s containment net to find Hyun-seo themselves. It is a double struggle, fought against the creature and an incompetent system at once.

Direction — Releasing a monster in broad daylight, a blend of genres

The most astonishing thing about Bong Joon-ho’s direction is how freely it crosses genres. The Host is a creature film and at the same time a family drama, a social satire and a black comedy. A tense chase unfolds, then sudden laughter cuts in, and before that laughter fades a tragedy crashes down. The skill of blending these emotions, which would normally clash, naturally within a single frame is extraordinary.

The way it presents the creature is clever, too. Rather than hiding the monster in darkness, the director boldly reveals it in broad daylight. He abandons the standard tactic of concealing its form to heighten fear, and instead releases the creature in the middle of everyday life to generate a greater unease. The sensation of the familiar space of the Han River turning into a stage of horror in an instant is potent. The creature’s design is also striking. Rather than flaunting an imposing scale, it has a somewhat deformed, ungainly shape, which adds plausibility to the premise that it is a mutation born of pollution. Scenes of this creature hanging upside down from a Han River bridge to rest, or sprinting across the bank, show off Bong Joon-ho’s signature knack for twisting a familiar landscape into something strange.

Performance — Song Kang-ho between the comic and the harrowing

Through the character of Gang-du, Song Kang-ho draws out the ordinary and the desperate at once. He renders a father who seems dim yet burns hotter than anyone for his daughter, perfectly poised on the border between the comic and the harrowing. Byun Hee-bong conveys the weight of an old man trying to protect his family to the end, while Park Hae-il and Bae Doona play, respectively, an angry unemployed uncle and a composed archer aunt with distinct character. Above all, Go Ah-sung as Hyun-seo impressively expresses the fear and resolve of a child trapped in a sewer despite her young age, firmly anchoring the film’s emotional center.

What the film says — The real monster is the incompetent system

The true monster of The Host is not the creature risen from the Han River. The film portrays as the greater threat a system that, in the face of crisis, is busy controlling and quarantining citizens rather than protecting them, and a power that passes off responsibility and conceals the truth. The greatest barrier the family had to confront in saving Hyun-seo was not the creature but an incompetent, irresponsible society. Through a situation in which ordinary people must protect themselves without the state’s help, Bong Joon-ho skillfully hides sharp social criticism beneath the skin of a creature film. The process by which the false information of a virus spreads and innocent people are quarantined in the name of disease control teaches us how a society’s attitude toward a disaster can become a greater violence than the disaster itself. The film chooses a tragic ending yet never lets go of the bond of the small community that is a family, in order to carry the message that, in a world with nowhere to turn for trust, what ultimately protects people is people.

Ratings & reception

Its IMDb rating is 7.1 out of 10, its Rotten Tomatoes freshness is 93 percent, and its Metacritic score is a very high 85 out of 100. Upon release it succeeded commercially at home, drawing over ten million viewers, and it also won great attention abroad with an invitation to the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Its originality in fusing social message and family drama onto the creature genre is still counted among Korean cinema’s landmark achievements.

Verdict

The Host is a rich work that feels like several films packed into one. The thrill of a creature film, the tears of a family drama, and the bite of social satire mesh without any one feeling extraneous. Considering Bong Joon-ho’s singular talent for borrowing the grammar of a familiar genre yet twisting it in an entirely different direction, four stars is a natural conclusion.

Recommended for

• Viewers who love original films that break down genre boundaries
• Those who want to enjoy creature spectacle and social criticism together
• Anyone who wants to see the early collaboration between Song Kang-ho and Bong Joon-ho