The Host (2006 film)

Plot

In 2000, an American military pathologist orders his Korean assistant to dump 200 bottles of formaldehyde down a drain leading into the Han River. Over the next several years, there are sightings of a strange amphibious creature in the waterway, and the fish in the river die off. A suicidal man, just before jumping into the river, sees something dark moving in the water.

In 2006, a slow-witted young man named Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) runs a small snack-bar in a park near the River with his father, Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong). Other family members are Gang-du's daughter, Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung); his sister Nam-joo (Bae Doona), a national medalist archer; and his brother, Nam-il (Park Hae-il), an alcoholic college graduate and former political activist.

While Gang-du is delivering food to some customers, a huge creature emerges from the Han River and begins attacking people. Gang-du sees his daughter in the crowd and tries to grab her and run. As he realizes he grabbed on the wrong girl, he sees the creature snatching Hyun-seo and diving back into the river. After a mass funeral for the victims, government representatives and the American military arrive and quarantine people who had contact with the creature, including Gang-du and his family. It is announced that the creature is not only a direct danger, but also the host of a deadly, unknown virus.

Gang-du is in a hospital when he receives a phone call from Hyun-seo. She is on the phone long enough to explain that she is trapped somewhere in the sewers with the creature, but her phone stops working shortly after. Gang-du tries to explain this to others, but his claims go ignored by all except his family. The four of them escape the hospital. Hee-bong buys a truck, weapons, and a map of the sewers to look for Hyun-seo. They find a snack bar, have a meal and rest. Upon waking up, they encounter the creature. Soon, they discover their gun only serves to anger it, and Hee-bong gets himself killed buying time for his children to escape. Gang-du is captured by the Army. Nam-il and Nam-joo escape but are separated from each other.

Two homeless boys, Se-jin and Se-joo, are searching for food when they are attacked and swallowed by the creature. It returns to its sleeping area in the sewer, a large hole, and regurgitates them. Only Se-Joo is alive. Hyun-seo helps Se-Joo hide in a spot the creature cannot reach.

Nam-il meets an old friend to trace the location of Hyun-seo's call. He learns that the government has placed a bounty on his family. The friend tries to capture Nam-il, but he manages to escape after obtaining Hyun-seo's general location. He texts the location to Nam-joo and Gang-du. He meets a homeless man (Yoon Je-moon) who knows about the quarantine but decided to stay in the city. After learning of Nam-il's intentions, the man decides to help him. Gang-du overhears the scientists discussing the fact that there is no virus; it is all made up to distract people from the creature's origin. The scientists decide to lobotomize Gang-du to silence him. Gang-du escapes by taking one of the nurses hostage and continues searching for his daughter.

Back in the sewers, while the creature is sleeping, Hyun-seo makes a rope from old clothes and uses it to get out of the hole. She realizes too late that the creature only feigns sleep to lure her out of her hiding spot. Hyun-seo and Se-joo are swallowed by the creature.

The government announces the plan to release a chemical called Agent Yellow into the river and the surrounding area, hoping it will kill the creature. Gang-du finds the creature's sleeping spot but sees no one there. As Gang-du climbs down to the hole, the monster passes over him. He sees Hyun-seo's arm hanging out of its mouth and gives chase, meeting Nam-joo on the way. The creature makes its way to the location where Agent Yellow is released and a large crowd has formed in protest.

As the creature attacks the crowd, Agent Yellow is released, which appears to stun the creature. Gang-du pulls Hyun-seo out of its mouth and sees her still clutching Se-joo. The boy is still alive, but Hyun-seo is already dead.

As the creature wakes up, Gang-du starts to attack it but is knocked to the ground. Nam-il and the homeless man come to Gang-du's aid. While Nam-il throws Molotov cocktails at the creature, the homeless man pours gasoline onto it. Nam-il accidentally drops his last bottle. Nam-joo picks up the flaming cloth from the bottle with one of her arrows and fires it at the creature, setting it on fire. Before the creature can escape into the water, Gang-du impales it with a metal pole, finally killing it. As Nam-il and Nam-joo hold Hyun-seo, mourning her death, Gang-du picks up Se-joo and takes him to safety.

In the final scene, Gang-du has adopted Se-joo. The two live in his food stand, and he still watches over the river. They have a meal together, ignoring a news broadcast about the aftermath of the incident.

Cast

Background

The film was the third feature-length film directed by Bong Joon-ho. Following the positive reaction to the director's debut, Barking Dogs Never Bite, coupled with the critical acclaim and box-office success of his previous work, Memories of Murder, the film was given a generous production budget of around ₩10 billion (just over US$10 million), huge by local industry standards.

Filming

Some of the filming took place in the real sewers near the Han River, rather than on a set. The stars and crew were inoculated against tetanus by the medical officer. During filming, the crew had to deal with the effects of changes in weather and ambient temperature. This including the sewage water freezing in cold temperatures, so that it had to be broken up and melted; and during hot and windy periods, the water evaporated and the silt turned to dust, which blew around in the breeze and into the faces of the crew.

Special effects

The director had to work around the budget-imposed restrictions, especially when it came to special effects. The creature was designed by Chin Wei-chen, the modeling was done by New Zealand-based Weta Workshop and the animatronics were by John Cox's creature Workshop. The CGI for the film was done by The Orphanage, which also did some of the visual effects in The Day After Tomorrow.

The monster was designed with some specific parameters in mind. According to the director himself the inspiration came from a local article about a deformed fish with an S-shaped spine caught in the Han River. Therefore, the director's wishes were for it to look like an actual mutated fish-like creature, rather than have a more fantastical design. In the opening scenes of the film, two fishermen presumably encounter the creature whilst it is still small enough to fit in one of their cups; suggestive of its humble, more realistic origins. The monster also exhibits frontal limbs similar to amphibians' legs. This element of its design seems to have been more a choice of functionality on the designers' part as the monster needed to be able to run and perform certain acrobatic movements during the film. For a genre film monster, the creature's size is rather small, only about the size of a truck. Also unlike in many other monster-themed films, the creature is fully visible from early on in the film, sometimes for large stretches of time and even in broad daylight, which earned the film some critical praise.

Political background

The film was in part inspired by an incident in 2000 in which a Korean mortician working for the U.S. military in Seoul dumped a large amount of formaldehyde down the drain. In addition to its environmental concerns, this caused some antagonism toward the United States. The American military stationed in South Korea is portrayed as uncaring about the effects their activities have on the locals. The chemical agent used by the American military to combat the monster in the end, named "Agent Yellow" in a thinly-veiled reference to Agent Orange, was also used to satirical effect. The director, Bong Joon-ho, commented on the issue: "It's a stretch to simplify The Host as an anti-American film, but there is certainly a metaphor and political commentary about the U.S."

Because of its themes, which can be seen as critical of the United States, the film was lauded by North Korean authorities, a rarity for a South Korean blockbuster film.

The film features a satirical portrayal of the South Korean government as bureaucratic, inept, and essentially uncaring. Korean youth protesters are featured satirically in the film, in a mixed way, partially heroic and partially self-righteous and oblivious. According to Bong Joon-ho, the Park Nam-il character is a deliberate anachronism, a reference to South Korea's troubled political history, which involved violent protest. "When you look in terms of this character, it's sort of like the feeling of time going backwards. [...] You could say that he is the image of the college protester back ten years ago; it doesn't exist in the present day."

Reception

The Host premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2006 and was released nationally in South Korea on July 27, 2006. Having been heavily hyped and featuring one of the most popular leading actors in the country, Song Kang-ho, the film was released on a record number of screens and made the South Korean record books with its box office performance during its opening weekend. The 2.63 million admissions and US$17.2 million box office revenue easily beat the previous records set by Typhoon. The film reached six million viewers on August 6, 2006. In early September the film became South Korea's all time box office leader, selling more than 12.3 million tickets in just over a month in a country of 48.5 million. By the end of its run on November 8, the viewing figures came in at 13,019,740.

The film was released theatrically in Australia on August 17, 2006. During the first half of September 2006, it premiered in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Hong Kong. It received a theatrical release in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2006. This was its first official release outside of film festivals, and outside Asia and Australia. Its American release was March 9, 2007. It was also released in France, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, and Spain, amongst other countries.

The Host received screenings on several film festivals. In addition to its opening in Cannes, among the most prominent were the Toronto, Tokyo and New York film festivals. The film swept Korea's Blue Dragon Awards : The Host received five awards, Go Ah-sung took Best New Actress and Byun Hee-bong was awarded as Best Supporting Actor.

The French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma ranked the film as 3rd place in its list of best films of the year 2006 and 4th for the 2000-2009 decade. The Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo selected it as one of the top 10 best foreign films of the year 2006. (Flags of Our Fathers won the best foreign film of the year 2006.)

With a limited American release starting March 11, 2007, The Host received critical acclaim, with a 92% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In addition, it was ranked one of the top films of 2007 on Metacritic with a score of 85 out of 100. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote "The Host is a loopy, feverishly imaginative genre hybrid about the demons that haunt us from without and within." The filmmaker Quentin Tarantino included it in his list of top 20 films released since 1992 (the year he became a director). The film was also listed at #81 on Empire's list of The 100 Best Films of World Cinema.

Top ten lists

The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.

Awards and nominations

Western media

The region-2 UK release of the film was released on March 5, 2007, while the region-1 US DVD was released on July 24, 2007, in both single-disc and a two-disc collector's edition in DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats.

Video game

Twitch Film announced on November 3, 2009 that a video game was planned, to be released as a multi-platform first-person shooter. As of 2014, it's not yet released, and possibly cancelled.

Sequel

In June 2007, it was announced that a 3D prequel was in progress, with a different director. The budget for The Host 2 has been set at close to US$12 million, and will be based on a script by webcomic artist Kang Full.

Remake

In November 2008, it was announced that Universal Studios would be remaking The Host with Gore Verbinski producing, Mark Poirier writing the script, and first-time director Fredrik Bond directing the film. The film was set for a 2011 release. As of November 2012, however, there were no updates on the remake's production.