The original Godzilla film, Gojira (1954), is arguably a movie that can only exist in its time, as an all-too-obvious reaction to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings. Is it any wonder why the subsequent Godzilla flicks were geared more towards campiness? It was a solo cautionary tale that grew into a moviemaking trend.
But we’re not here to talk about the G-Man. We’re here to talk about South Korea’s highest-grossing movie in their Box Office history: The Host -- an action-horror-science-fiction-comedy that takes its cue from Gojira and focuses more on the aftermath of a giant monster attack, rather than the monster itself.
In the film, trouble begins in the year 2000, when an American mortician at a U.S. Army base in Seoul orders his Korean assistant to dump bottles of dusty formaldehyde down the drain. The assistant objects that its toxic chemicals would end up in the Han River, but Dr. America doesn’t give a poo about what it does to the environment (There’s your political commentary right there – and it’s not the only US criticism prevalent in the movie). The chemicals eventually mutate something in the river, turning it into a lizard-frog-squid-thingie hybrid monster. Six years later, it’s twenty-feet tall with a taste for human flesh. On an idyllic summer day, the monster emerges onto land and wreaks havoc.
The Host deals with the common man and their concerns during a time of crisis. It sympathizes with the people that, in the usual monster movie, run around screaming not knowing what’s going on. Rather than in-the-loop scientists or action heroes, our champions are clumsy members of a dysfunctional family, consisting of a poor old street vendor and his three grown children: the lazy and immature son Gang-du, the angry alcoholic son Nam-Il, and the celebrated archery athlete daughter Nam-Joo. Though they don’t get along, they band together to rescue Gang-du’s young daughter Hyun-Seo, who’s been kidnapped by the monster during its initial attack. As the audience, we see the overall big picture; the international politics and social upheaval caused by the monster’s emergence, but our heroes are ignorant to any of that.
There are many, many references to current events in its use of imageries. When the media runs a story that the monster is a “host” to a new breed of virus, an epidemic paranoia breaks out, with every citizen wearing a surgical mask a la the SARS scare. Then there are the obvious Katrina jabs when the government fails to respond properly to the monster attack, the repeat of Vietnam’s Agent Orange debacle, and even some aspects regarding Guantanamo Bay. Yes, there are a lot of criticisms of America’s blunders, though the film itself is actually not anti-American; it’s just against the elitism of authority figures. The commentaries are anything but subtle, but they work because the film is more satirical than preachy.
If you think all this makes the film sound stiff, it’s actually not. The Host doesn’t copy Gojira’s harrowing tone -- instead, it manages to inject a ton of physical humor into the story. In director Bong Joon-Ho’s previous film Memories of Murder, he treated the story of the real-life Korean serial killer’s disturbing murders seriously, but gave the lead detectives very funny slapstick qualities that turned the film into one of the most unusual police procedural flicks around. The Host shares this offbeat mish-mash of genres: It’s the kind of movie where a tear-jerking funeral scene can without warning turn into a hilarious gag routine involving announcements of cars being parked in the wrong spot. The unpredictable nature of the film’s tone makes it a little more fun to watch, as you’re never sure what would happen next. Just as the film starts to thrill and you’re engrossed in a tense horror sequence, director Bong would throw a comedic curveball and reels you back.
The humor is certainly essential to the picture, because it stands in for the lack of large-scale action. The attack at the beginning of the movie leaves an impression due to its sheer sense of excitement and great use of CGI. Without some laughs, there’s a danger of the film dragging, and especially due to the political content, an even more dangerous possibility of being a pretentious protest film. The Host avoids that by upholding the monster movie tradition of cool and gross-out moments.
If you enjoy the Japanese kaijyuu flicks or those 1950s giant ants double features, it’s hard to go wrong with The Host. It’s rare to find a B-movie that takes itself seriously, instead of intentionally camping it up, but still manages to have fun with the material and run with it. It’s the closest thing you’ll find to a bastard child of Eight-Legged Freaks and Dr. Strangelove.
"The Host" opens March 9, 2007 and is rated R. Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi. Written by Bong Joon-Ho, Baek Chul-Hyun, Ha Jun-Won.
