The Host (2006)

The Host (2006) Movie Info

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Back in 2000 an incident took place in Seoul, South Korea where a mortician employed by the US Military ordered a large quantity of highly toxic formaldehyde dumped down the drains of his lab and into the Han River. The incident came to light and sparked a wave of anti-American sentiment in the country. Director Bong Joon Ho has taken that incident and used it as the basis for a genuinely involving and often scary as hell monster movie entitled The Host.

I’m usually pretty skeptical whenever legions of critics worldwide praise a movie. That sounds insane, but generally when a film in the horror genre receives the critical lauding that The Host did, it means we end up with a film that art house frequenters can enjoy but the average fan will find dull and pretentious. That certainly isn’t the case here.

To state it directly, The Host is the best monster movie I’ve ever seen. It is a completely unexpected departure in style for a genre that has given us radiation spewing dinosaurs and charismatic fifty foot gorillas.

The story goes something like this: In 2000, a mortician has his assistant dump hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde down the drains into the Han River because the bottles have dust on them. Two years later, the assistant who did the dumping is seen preparing to leap to his death from a bridge over the Han, remarking just before he takes the fateful plunge that there’s “something dark in the water.”

Four years after that, we are introduced to a reasonably goofy individual named Gang Du ( Song Kang Ho), who operates a noodle stand off of the Han with his father Hee Bong (Byean Hee-bong) and his middle school aged daughter Hyun Sea (Ko Ah Seong). One sunny afternoon as his daughter and father watch his sister Nam Joo (Bae Doona) compete in a televised archery contest, Gang Du is told to take a complimentary order from the noodle stand to a group of people relaxing near the bank of the river.

When Gang Du arrives, he finds that the customers are not relaxing on a blanket as expected, but part of a gathered crowd staring and pointing at something hanging from the rafters beneath the bridge over the river. The thing which is moving and looks like some sort of mutant salamander drops into the water and (as a joke) everyone begins to throw food items such as fried squid and beer cans at it. It seems to swim away. Then, as Gang Du attempts to complete the order, the monstrosity launches itself out of the water and onto the mainland, tearing a bloody path of destruction through the crowd.

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