Review of The Host / 괴물, directed by Bong Joon-ho

Many years ago, I was a freshman in college who had just moved back from studying abroad in Korea. I had done an intensive program for high schoolers to learn Korean, so I was really feeling the reverse culture shock when I was dropped back at my home in Baltimore.

Less than two weeks later, I was moving to New York City for college to start my freshman year. When I was registering for classes, I thought it would be nice to take the Contemporary Korean Cinema course, despite it being a level 300 class. I was the only person in there who was below junior year.

That said, one of the many incredible movies we watched in that course was The Host. I had never seen a Bong Joon-ho movie before that class, and it really was my first deep dive into film and its magic. Years later, I became a critic, was attached to an outlet, and then ended up starting this blog.

But I was thinking about The Host recently and decided to crank it up one more time, especially since I saw it was available for a couple of different streaming platforms I own.

Let’s get into the review!

When a monster emerges from the Han River, one family must rescue their kidnapped family member.

This film begins several years prior, when an American scientist tells his assistant, who is Korean, to dump a ton of formaldehyde down the drain. Turns out it’s connected to the Han River, and Bong Joon-ho based this off of a real case where the Americans were found to be doing just that.

But that one incident causes something awful down the road: it creates a monster. People report spotting a weird creature in the waterway, but no one ever suspects anything. The fish all begin dying off in the river, too, implying something is seriously wrong.

Years pass. It is 2006, and Park Gang-du works at a snack bar by the river with his dad Hee-bong. His daughter Hyun-seo joins them sometimes, and his sister, a national medal archer named Nam-joo, and alcoholic brother Nam-il occasionally are mentioned or drop by.

Everything goes to hell one day when the monster jumps out of the river and kills a bunch of people. Gang-du tries to grab his daughter’s hand and lead her out of there, but when he turns around, he sees he grabbed the wrong person. The monster grabs Hyun-seo and goes into the water with her.

The government and cops arrive to quarantine anyone who came into contact with the creature. That includes Gang-du and the crew, and they reveal anyone who came into contact with it has a virus. Gang-du then receives a phone call from Hyun-seo, who explains she is in the sewers with the monster.

Her phone then dies, but Gang-du and his family escape from the hospital in a rescue attempt. They purchase the necessary weapons from some gangsters. Meanwhile, the monster eats two boys by the snack bar, and Hyun-seo is horrified when one of them is spat out alive. He is Se-joo.

She hides him in the drain with her, while her family finds the monster else. They shoot at it but fail, and it kills Hee-bong because Gang-du made a fatal miscalculation. The army grabs Gang-du, and Nam-il and Nam-joo are separated. Nam-il finds an old activist friend, who reveals there is now a bounty on the entire family.

His friend is about to sell him out, but Nam-il escapes and figures out where Hyun-seo is. Gang-du, still under capture by the Americans, overhears that there is no virus, as the government just wanted to hide where the monster came from. They make the decision to lobotomize Gang-du, and prepare for the procedure.

Meanwhile, in the sewers, Hyun-seo tries to escape. She made a rope from clothes, but the creatures wakes up and swallows both of the kids. Gang-du escapes before they cut into his brain, holds a nurse hostage, and gets out of there. Nam-il befriends a homeless man who helps him on his quest, while the government publicly announces they’ll dump more chemicals into the river to kill the monster.

Gang-du somehow finds the monster, and realizes his daughter’s hand is dangling from its mouth. He lures the monster out, runs into Nam-joo along the way, and they bring it to where the Agent Yellow is about to be dropped. A protest is gathered there, and the monster attacks the people, spurring the Agent Yellow to be released.

The creature stops because of it, and Gang-du grabs Hyun-seo from its mouth. She’s dead, but he realizes Se-joo is still alive in there. The entire family and the homeless man friend attack the creature, setting it on fire and stabbing it, and then they mourn for their lost family members.

Gang-du then revives Se-joo, and he later adopts the kid after taking over the snack bar. In the final scenes, he hears a sound from the river and grabs a rifle, but nothing’s there. The two sit down to eat as the television news says the entire incident was because of misinformation.

Overall Thoughts

Honestly, I think this is one of Bong’s best movies. I think Parasite is good on a technical level, but it seems less Korean and more international in some ways.

This is a story that has uniquely Korean rage, especially when it comes to the shade thrown at the government and the Americans involved with all of this.

That said, The Host is also brilliant in how it merges genres. There’s tragedy, comedy, and satire mixed into all of this, and despite how some of the scenes are extremely sad, he inserts pockets of humor.

For example, when Gang-du realizes he grabbed a stranger? Comedy. I die laughing every time.

Go watch this one if you haven’t already.

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