Unholy 'Host'
Monster attack meets family feud in Korean horror-comedy
Seven years ago, in an American military facility in Seoul, South Korea, a mortuary supervisor named Albert McFarland ordered a reluctant Korean worker to dump 227 liters of nasty formaldehyde into the Han River, the city's primary waterway. The incident and the U.S. government's efforts to protect McFarland from prosecution became a local scandal.
This event also kicks off Bong Joon-ho's The Host, which, when released last summer, became Korea's highest grossing film ever and went on to remarkable critical buzz at festivals. But The Host is no single-minded environmental tract: After this introductory scene - with a droll Scott Wilson (In Cold Blood, Junebug) appearing very briefly as McFarland - the movie leaps forward six years, to a beautiful sunny day when a gargantuan mutant monster leaps out of the river and starts gobbling the lunchtime picnickers.
Among the nearby residents is the Park family, including single dad Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), who looks after his 13-year-old daughter, Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung), as best he can. The problem is that he seems to be, well, a little mentally impaired: He's less mature than she is, basically an irresponsible boy in a hulking, sloppy body, topped by a shock of badly dyed blond hair. When the monster - who also appears to be transmitting a lethal virus - kidnaps Hyun-seo, Gang-du has to lumber into action, intermittently aided by the rest of the family: lovable Granddad (Byun Hee-bong); carping, nagging Brother (Park Hae-il); and Sis (Bae Du-na), an expert markswoman with a self-defeating temperament.
The Host is generally referred to as a horror film, but the IMDb comes a bit closer with "action/comedy/drama/fantasy/horror/sci-fi/thriller" - which helps explain why it's so relentlessly entertaining. It's also a dysfunctional-family story, with a number of parallels to Little Miss Sunshine, except with a giant evil carnivore instead of an evil beauty pageant. But, in both cases, the family has to pull itself together for the sake of the youngest member.
In an interview when Bong was in town last year to present the film at the AFI Fest, I ask if, as in many Asian movies, there's a political subtext - perhaps a dig at Americans in the opening scene - with particular resonance in Korea.
"Well, it's an actual case," he says. "But that's not representative; I wouldn't say that's the normal American ... . It's more a comment on the army. The middle-aged Korean man is very macho, and that scene is more a comment on the army and the authoritarian hierarchy of orders.
"Everything really flowed from the fact that, when I was young, I used to live in an apartment next to the Han River," he continues. "Everything came from the location. It's a natural location and familiar to all kinds of people ... a very normal space. My first idea was: What if something were to come out of that? So I started with the monster and the traditions of monsters colliding with reality. The political satire, the characters, the family, all that came later while writing the script."
But the resolution isn't quite as sweet and uplifting as Little Miss Sunshine. Because of certain plot elements, I wonder if Hollywood would pass on doing a remake, despite the movie's extraordinary commercial and critical success.
"We actually had some funding from Sony Japan and Universal Japan," Bong says, "so there were already major Hollywood companies involved. And they had been monitoring it. They gave us some reactions, and they said that X [Bong names one of the characters] must not die. X must live and Y must die a tragic death. I said, 'What is this? Armageddon?' Come on."
Published: 03/08/2007
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