The Host: Creature Double Feature | The Monster | Fun Facts

There are a lot of films titled “The Host” but the only one worth watching is the one from Academy Award Winning Director Bong Joon Ho.

In ‘The Host’, a giant creature plunges from a bridge into the Han River. At first you’re thinking “what was that” and before the crowd on the shore can even register that something dangerous is coming their way – BAM – it’s a feeding frenzy.

When a young girl is snatched in the melee, her family sets off to save her from the monster that the government claims to be a host of an unidentified virus.

Creature Double Feature

This movie reminded me so much of the Saturday mornings I spent watching Creature double Feature movies with Godzilla. But, don’t even try to write of ‘The Host’ as your typical monster movie. What you end up getting is a surprisingly deep and emotional movie that just happens to feature an awesome monster destroying everything in its path.

Of course, the government in the movie is hiding the true creation story of the monster. But, the backstory shows us that the monster was created by Americans, who poured pretty much all the formaldehyde in the world down the drain and mutated a fish into a terrifying man-eating, rampaging monster. This is actually based on a real event in which an American on a US military base dumped a lot of formaldehyde into a sewer that connected to the Han River in Seoul South Korea.

The Monster

The computer-generated (CG) monster is masterfully executed. The far-away shots play with your head – was that a fin, how big is that thing, what am I looking at? The closeups are – hide under the blanket, close your eyes, block your ears – fantastic. 

The way the characters and environments interact with the monster is very impressive, and you can really believe that it’s actually there in the movie world. The destruction on screen is a blast to watch. If this was the extent of the movie’s depth it would be a fun popcorn movie, but that is just the surface, the movie has some really deep characters as well as a profound statement on politics and panic in the public. The monster leads to a containment befitting any class act apocalyptic movie, and the main characters become renegades trying to recover a member of their family that was taken by the monster.

Fun Facts

If you’re wondering if the monster in this movie has a name, like Godzilla or Mothra, the answer is no. But, Director Bong Joon Ho nicknamed the creature – Steve Buscemi. Yes. The monster was nicknamed Steve Buscemi. Reportedly because the monster was inspired by the way Steve Buscemi acted in Fargo. Let’s hope Steve took that as a compliment.

“The Host” was named one of Quentin Tarantino‘s top twenty films since 1992 and did very well at the box office. In fact, when it was released, it was highest grossing South Korean film of all time. Supposedly over 20% of the Korean population went to see the movie.

‘The Host’ is a clever drama with a strong social commentary wrapped up in an awesome monster movie.