THE HOST

The Host Movie Review

An American pathologist (Scott Wilson, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon) orders gallons of formaldehyde be dumped into the Han River, resulting in a monster fish that kidnaps people, particularly a child named Hyun-seo (Go-Ah-sung). We then follow Hyun-seo’s family as they try to rescue her. Bong Joon-ho brings us this 2007 South Korean film—if his name sounds familiar, you probably heard it a lot around the 2019 Oscar season, when his slightly overrated film Parasite walked away with the Best Picture award, beating out films such as the much more overrated The Joker and the less overrated Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which my girlfriend and I saw at the SIFF Cinema Uptown while vacationing in Seattle last year...remember vacations? Weren’t they nice?

"Let's see...we have our cameras, our masks..."

Back to The Host—this one was also met with much critical acclaim, and broke box office records in South Korea upon its release. Similar to Parasite, the scares in this movie are overshadowed by comedic moments and social commentary. Interestingly, the movie is based, in part, on real life events...this being the American dumping toxins into the river, not, you know, a kidnapping monster. Speaking of the monster, it’s a CGI creation that is on par with what you would see in your typical SyFy Original, so don’t expect much out of it. The thing moves around awkwardly...sort of like a slightly injured frog. The acting is fine, offering nothing spectacular but nothing too bad either, and here is where I will insert the obligatory subtitles warning. The Host is not a bad creature flick, but having heard so much about it, I did expect a bit more.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6

The Host Movie Trailer