The Host: Monster Movie with a Message

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on October 7, 2007.

There are several different ways by which a director can craft social/political satire. One is to produce subtle criticism that is woven into the larger fabric of the movie, so that the satire is neither explicit nor obvious. While the director faces the prospect of the audience missing the point, he/she nevertheless can escape the charge of producing a heavy-handed, contrived piece of commentary. After all, the director can claim that any satirical element that the audience may find is inadvertent: he/she is just trying to tell a story, and if the audience interprets a portion of it satirically, then so be it.

Joon-ho Bong's The Host (2006) appears to follow that subtle method of satire. While his commentary is not completely "hidden" (it doesn't take much effort to find it), it is also not an integral part of the film. One simply can watch it "on the surface" and take it as a modern interpretation of the classic monster movie (or, more specifically, the big-monster-causes-havoc-in-large-urban-setting movie).

One of the chief virtues of The Host (a.k.a., Gwoemul) is its slightly irreverent style. The main characters stem from a Korean family that is not dysfunctional per se, but nevertheless quirky and off-key. Park Hie-bong (Hie-bong Byeon) is the patriarch, a snack vendor who sets up shop next to the Han River in Seoul. He has three children: Park Gang-Du (Kang-ho Song), who won't be winning any prizes for acumen or effort (at the beginning of the movie, we see him sleeping on the job in his father's mobile store); Park Nam-il (Hae-il Park), an active member of the democracy movement in his college days who now finds himself unemployed and constantly drinking; and Park Nam-Joo (Du-na Bae), a competitive archer. He has one granddaughter: Park Hyun-seo (Ah-sung Ko), whose mother left her dad (Park Gang-Du) a long time ago.

One bright and sunny day, the Seoul residents relaxing by the Han notice that something strange is lurking beneath the surface. To their surprise and horror, it turns out to be an enormous mutant creature that unfortunately is no herbivore. It jumps out of the river and causes massive chaos, chasing and killing people. Of course, The Host follows the classic aesthetic of the monster movie, in which hundreds of extras scream, shout, and run frantically away from the Godzilla wannabe — though, compared to this monster, Godzilla looks like a cuddly teddy bear.

In the mayhem, Park Gang-Du loses his daughter, and he sees her getting pulled into the river by the monster, presumably to drown and/or get eaten. Her family is utterly crushed. They, along with anyone else having contact with the monster, are quarantined, and they have nothing to look forward to but days of grieving and government-administered medical procedures. However, in the course of his woe, Park Gang-Du receives a brief, frantic cell phone call from his daughter. She is alive, and her family must find a way to escape the quarantine and to track the girl within the maze of the metropolitan sewer system.

So how does The Host provide political commentary? Right at the beginning, we find out how such a mutant came to exist. A U.S. military doctor (remember: the United States still has a large military presence in the country) orders an underling to dump dozens of bottles of a toxin down the drain. Of course, such a practice goes against regulation, and the substance is bound to end up in the water supply, but the doctor doesn't seem to care. The toxin mixes with the organic compounds in the river, and years later we see the result: a big, scary monster. (It is not clear why there is only one big, scary monster since presumably, the toxin would have affected numerous aquatic creatures. However, now is not the time to quibble.)

Even though the U.S. has created this minor problem for one of its East Asian allies, South Korea ultimately cannot rely on the U.S. to fix it. Instead, the country's best hope lies, of course, with its native sons and daughter: the brave, courageous—though slightly quirky—family trying to rescue one of its own. It is hard not to notice a sense of national pride coming through this film. The United States' half-century presence on the Korean peninsula has not been without controversy, of course, and there is something anachronistic about the Cold War divide between Seoul and Pyongyang. If there is a problem lurking on the peninsula—could North Korea's Kim Jong-il be the "monster" in question?—then according to the film, it can (and should) be solved by Koreans. In The Host, we see that the family has the energy and resources to tackle even the biggest problem. (The alcoholic son, in particular, puts his skills at throwing Molotov cocktails—honed during his student-protest days—to good use.)

(It is important to note, however, that any national pride in The Host is low-key. After all, the movie is funny and irreverent, and—as a co-worker of mine pointed out—it seems to have fun playing a bit on Korean stereotypes. Just because you're proud of your country doesn't mean you can't poke fun at it.)

Thus, while social/political satire easily can be found in The Host, it is by no means heavy-handed, and the subtle commentary takes up a relatively small portion of the film. If all you want is an old-school monster movie with a Korean twist, then Joon-ho Bong delivers nicely.