NOTE: A few spoilers have been blacked out for those that have not yet seen The Host and intend to, highlight them with your mouse to read the text.
Earlier this year the Korean monster movie The Host was the big talk in critics’ circles as it currently holds a 92% rating at RottenTomatoes with an overwhelming 121 of 131 reviews posted as positive. I am not here to combat these reviews, I can see why it would be a critical favorite, especially considering it is quite a unique monster movie filled with metaphors and political commentary and satire.
Of course, critics don’t make up all opinion on the film and looking at The Host as a monster movie and a monster movie alone can be the only explanation for all the negative comments on the IMDB boards. If you go into this looking for a monster movie alone and aren’t keeping an eye out for everything else writer/director Joon-ho Bong has thrown into this flick then you are going to be in for a long two hours, two hours that also should have been only 90 minutes, but that is a whole other story.
Personally I didn’t think this movie was all that good. Bong gets his point across in regards to meddling governments, mistrust, lies and deceit, but he does so at the expense of proper storytelling and pacing. Bong’s intentions are interesting as we will soon see, but as a film it all doesn’t quite work.
The film’s antagonist is a mutant creature that swims in Korea’s Han River. The reason this monster comes into existence is actually based on real events. In 2000 an American military civilian employee named Mr. McFarland was ordered to dispose of formaldehyde by dumping it into the sewer system that led to the Han River despite the objection of a South Korean subordinate (source). This scene is duplicated in a rather childish manner and actually opens the film. Here is how it plays out:
Mr. Kim: I will clean them again.
American Scientist: You don’t have to clean up now. Why don’t you dump this first?
Mr. Kim: But… that’s formahyde.
American Scientist: Formaldehyde to be precise. To be even more precise, dirty formaldehyde. Every bottle is coated with layers of dust. [he wipes his finger across the top of the dusty bottle] Put it into the sink.
Mr. Kim: Excuse me?
American Scientist: Just empty every bottle to the very last drop.
Mr. Kim: It’s just – these are toxic chemicals and the regulations state that…
American Scientist: Pour them right down the drain Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim: If I poor them in the drain they’ll run into the Han River.
American Scientist: That’s right, let’s just dump them in the Han River.
Mr. Kim: But this isn’t just any old toxic chemicals. You have to…
American Scientist: The Han River is very broad Mr. Kim, let’s try to be broad minded about this. Hmmm?
Anyway, that’s an order. So, start pouring.
[cut to Mr. Kim pouring bottle after bottle of steaming chemicals straight down the drain, hundreds of them to be precise with a slow dissolve to the Han River and two fisherman finding a mutant something-or-other]
Obviously this scene is meant to be silly, and meant to be looked at with a quizzical eye thinking What the fuck? Unfortunately, if an audience didn’t have prior knowledge of the story it is based on it loses all its charm. What it basically says is, “This American scientist is a dick.” I am not about to say that wasn’t the intention either.
The mutant creature (is it a fish, tadpole, what?) is where the film obviously deviates from real life. After its first attack along the Han River shore the media and government step in and create a massive scare, but the scare is not specifically dedicated to the monster, instead it is what the monster is “hosting”. The government claims the monster is the host of a terrible and unclassified virus and begins to fumigate the area and begin testing those that were in direct contact. The primary candidate for testing is lead character Park Gang-Du whose daughter Hyun-seo has been captured by the terrifying monster. Gang-Du and his brother (Nam-il), sister (Nam-Joo) and father (Hie-bong) are being held in a hospital until they finally escape, setting off a media storm. The media catches wind that the virus is no longer contained and the public panics.
The whole thing reminded me of Cracked.com’s “The 6 Most Over-Hyped Threats to America (And What Should Scare You Instead)” column in which at #6 was “BULLSHIT DISEASES LIKE SARS & BIRD FLU”. The piece goes on to say the following:
The Hype
In 2004 and 2005, the government and the media made you believe that SARS was about to break into your house and rape you. The St. Petersburg Times , for one, referred to SARS as a “mysterious fever [that] bolted out of south China and spread illness and death across the globe,†and the Rolling Stones headlined a SARS benefit show that drew a crowd of nearly a half a million (which is ironically also the combined age of the Stones). More recently, Bird Flu has spurred fears across America, with one CNN reporter claiming that “No act of modern warfare, with the possible exception of a nuclear exchange between major world powers, has the potential to threaten as many lives and cause as much disruption to the global economy as [Bird Flu].†To be fair, this man slept through 9/11 and nobody remembered to tell him about it.Why You Should Blow It Off
The one major outbreak of SARS resulted in 774 deaths, while the Bird Flu has killed only 191 people worldwide since 2003. The point is, every few years, a new pandemic du jour comes along to scare the ass off of the American public, and turns out to be a flop. The only reason people pay so much attention is because Outbreak is replayed on cable all the time and looks scary as shit, however unlikely it may be. (Not the part where Dustin Hoffman saves America by catching a monkey—that really happens.)What You Should Actually Be Pissing Your Pants About
How about some good ol’ fashioned tuberculosis? In a head-to-head deadly-off, it trumps these new-fish ailments with its 1.6 million annual worldwide fatalities. A Stones concert for TB just doesn’t sound very sexy, though.
I don’t think for a second that Bong wasn’t thinking the same thing when he wrote this movie as he created his phantom virus.
There are several other little jabs at governmental control and influence as Gang-Du’s father says at one moment, “The government said it, what choice do we have to believe it.” In other scene two guys are talking about receiving a reward after turning in Nam-il, one looks at the other and asks about taxes on the reward to which the other gentleman responds, “Well, there’s an exemption, and there’s no tax on extra earnings.” This second quote is just so out of left field in context of the scene it just continues to spell out Bong’s true intentions.
The final piece of obvious metaphor would be the American influenced use of a new chemical weapon called Agent Yellow to combat against the deadly virus that is proposed to exist. To say this wasn’t a commentary on the use of Agent Orange during Vietnam and even in Korea in the 1960s would have to be a lie. The interesting way it is used in this film is what needs to be paid most attention to and that is not used to combat the monster, but actually being used to combat against the virus, a virus the government knows at the time has not been proven to exist, which continues the lies and over exaggeration on the part of the government and media plot points of the story.
Some have said that this is an anti-American film, but I think it is more of a “stop lying to me and leave me the fuck alone” film. There is even a jab at the gas guzzling lifestyle during the final moments of the film, which only prove the monster is just one more metaphor (is it the government? is it society? is it both?) in this film that is anything but what it seems on the surface.
The film is billed as a comedic horror and really falls more in line as a political commentary on as many things Bong could think of to throw in the script. (The score alone makes this anything but a horror film as it is almost more operatic at times of concern.) Like I said before, I don’t think this movie is anything special and certainly nothing I would like to watch again, but it was definitely interesting to see the first time and then tool around the Net to see what others thought.
If you have any thoughts let ’em be known below.
