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Film review

The creature from the contaminated river

By Steve Persall
Published March 29, 2007

The Host (R) (119 min.) - Do you know what Al Gore's environmental documentary needed to drive home its point? A slimy mutant creature emerging from globally warmed waters, devouring all humans in its path.

Joon-ho Bong's The Host has one and it's a pip, a horror-comedy reminder that it's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Born of lazy human error in a contaminated river, the creature stands for everything we've done environmentally wrong on Earth, as Godzilla did for atomic radiation aftereffects in postwar Japan. The beast isn't truth, but it's certainly inconvenient for a dysfunctional Korean family dealing with each other.

The Park clan operates a fast-food stand for Han River visitors who will soon be on the monster's menu. Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) is the lazy proprietor who becomes a reluctant hero when his daughter (Ko Ah-sung) is snatched by the creature and stashed with other human snacks inside a bridge's columns. Gang-du's rescue mission is aided by his cranky father (Byeon Hie-bong), an alcoholic brother (Park Hae-il) and a sister who's an archery champion (Bae Du-na). A group escape in a van is an unintentional visual reference to Little Miss Sunshine's nuclear family meltdown.

The Parks don't know that a U.S. chemist (Scott Wilson) ordered dozens of tainted bottles of formaldehyde dumped into the waterway, a factual incident in 2000 that Bong takes to giddy extremes. The result is a huge, slimy hybrid of lizard, catfish and calamari, first seen hanging like a mutant loogie from a bridge. Spectators are amused then terrified when the creature's rampage begins.

The government's reaction to the terror is even scarier. It claims the creature is a host for a deadly virus resembling SARS. A massive quarantine effort begins, with Gang-du captured for observation after the beast slimes him. Paternal instincts compel him to escape and search for his daughter before she becomes an appetizer.

The Host takes none of this seriously, yet Bong's rapid pacing - greatly aided by Byung-woo Lee's percussive musical score -generates fine tension. The allegorical aspects of the story are what the best science fiction is all about, although they seem redundant before the overlong film is finished.

Bong's movie isn't the instant classic recent festival buzz suggests, but compared with what passes for frightful fun these days - essentially gore and nothing more - The Host is an enjoyable change of pace. B+

Steve Persall, Times film critic

[Last modified March 28, 2007, 10:07:41]