The Host (2006 film)


The Host is a 2006 South Korean monster film directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona and Go Ah-sung. The film concerns a monster kidnapping a man's daughter, and his attempts to rescue her. According to the director, his inspiration came from a local article about a deformed fish with an S-shaped spine caught in the Han River.
Following the success of the director's work Memories of Murder, The Host was highly anticipated. It was released on a record number of screens in its home country on July 27, 2006. By the end of its run on November 8, 13 million tickets had been sold, making it the highest-grossing South Korean film of all time. The film was released on a limited basis in the United States on March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD formats on July 24, 2007. It won several awards including Best Film at the Asian Film Awards and at the Blue Dragon Film Awards.

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.
In 2006, a slow-witted young man named Park Gang-du runs a small snack bar in a park near the river with his father, Hee-bong. Other family members are Gang-du's daughter, Hyun-seo ; his sister Nam-joo, a national medalist archer; and his brother, Nam-il, an alcoholic college graduate and former political activist.
A huge creature emerges from the Han River and begins attacking people. Gang-du tries to grab his daughter from the crowd and run but 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 the host of a deadly, unknown virus.
Gang-du receives a phone call from Hyun-seo. She explains that she is trapped in the sewers with the creature, but her phone stops working. Gang-du and his family escape the hospital and prepare supplies to look for Hyun-seo. Two homeless boys, Se-jin and Se-joo, are attacked and swallowed by the creature. It returns to its sleeping area in the sewer and regurgitates them. Only Se-Joo is alive. Hyun-seo helps Se-Joo hide in a spot the creature cannot reach.
The Parks encounter the creature and shoot at it until they run out of ammunition. Provoked, the creature kills Hee-bong. Gang-du is captured by the Army and Nam-il and Nam-joo are separated from each other. Nam-il meets an old friend for help and learns that the government has placed a bounty on his family. The friend tries to capture Nam-il, but he escapes after obtaining Hyun-seo's location. Gang-du overhears an American scientist discussing that there is no virus; it is made up to distract people from the creature's origin. They decide to lobotomize Gang-du to silence him.
While the creature is sleeping, Hyun-seo makes a rope from old clothes and uses it to get out of the hole. She realizes that the creature has only feigned sleep to lure her out of hiding. She and Se-joo are swallowed by the creature. Gang-du escapes by taking one of the nurses hostage. Nam-il meets a homeless man who helps him. The government announces the plan to release a chemical called Agent Yellow into the river, hoping it will kill the creature. Gang-du finds the creature and sees Hyun-seo's arm hanging out of its mouth. The creature goes to the location where Agent Yellow is released and a large crowd has formed in protest. As it attacks the crowd, Agent Yellow is released, which appears to stun it. Gang-du pulls Hyun-seo out of its mouth and sees her still clutching Se-joo; she has died protecting him.
Gang-du, enraged at his daughter's death, attacks the creature, aided by Nam-il, Nam-joo, and the homeless man. They set it on fire and Gang-du impales it with a pole, finally killing it. As they mourn Hyun-seo, Gang-du revives Se-joo. Some time later, it is seen that Gang-du has adopted Se-joo. 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 , 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 reported that he was ordered to dump 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."

Release

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.

Reception

Box Office

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 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.

Critical Reception

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.
With a limited American release starting March 11, 2007, The Host received critical acclaim. It holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 151 reviews with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critical consensus states, "As populace pleasing as it is intellectually satisfying, The Host combines scares, laughs, and satire into a riveting, monster movie." In addition, it was ranked one of the top films of 2007 on Metacritic with a score of 85 out of 100 based on 35 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". 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 film was also listed at #81 on Empire's list of The 100 Best Films of World Cinema.

Home media release

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

announced on November 3, 2009 that a video game was planned, to be released as a multi-platform first-person shooter. As of April 2020, no game had been released and is assumed to be vaporware.

Sequel

In June 2007, it was announced that a 3D film - alternately referred to as a sequel or prequel in news reports - was in progress, with a different director. The budget for The Host 2 was announced at close to, and would be based on a script by webcomic artist Kang Full. A FX demo reel debuted at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2010 and the projected release date of summer 2012 was announced. However, as of 2020, there have been no further updates on the project and its current status is unknown.

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. However, the production has remained in so-called "development hell".

Top ten lists

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