Review of The Host (2006) by Jarom M — 14 Mar 2011

Personal Score: 6/10.

I'm a little surprised to see this movie get such rave reviews as it did. Don't get me wrong, The Host is pretty good, but there are many serious flaws.

The story begins with two scientists, one Korean, the other American, with the American scientist ordering the other to pour gobs of chemicals down the drain, despite the fact that they'll end up in the Han River. Eventually this causes one particular creature to mutate into a gross, amphibian-like monster.

The opening 20 minutes of this film is brilliant, from the first attack by the monster to the capture of the main character's daughter. It's frightening and very well done. However, it's from this point on that the movie started to lose me.

The people attacked are all quarantined because of the threat of a virus that the monster apparently is carrying. The main character, the bumbling father, was even exposed to some of the creature's blood. But soon he gets a phone call from his daughter who was presumed dead. So he, his father, his brother and sister all set out to escpape and then find the little girl.

What's confusing from here is for one, it's never clear what this monster does. He captures people, two at a time, and takes them to a pit in the sewer. Most brought there are already dead but the girl somehow survived. It would seem that the bodies are brought there to be fed upon later, but even that isn't certain. It also is never certain whether or not the creature actually carries any kind of virus. On the one hand, we're told that an American soldier who was attacked died from a virus, but on the other hand a pair of scientists tell the father that there has never been any trace of virus found. So which is it? Honestly I was never sure.

Another flaw in this film is character development. The father and daughter are done well, and his father is given reasonable treatment, but the brother and sister aren't given much to work with. The daughter is good at archery and is sometimes slow moving, which gets her into trouble, but even those qualities aren't given much screen time. The brother is just always angry and apparently is a kind of escape artist (?) and that's basically it.

The final problem I'll get into is pacing. The movie starts off excellently, but then slows down and gets bogged down by scenes that seemed useless or over-long. I also wasn't sure how to feel at certain moments. The film has a great deal of funny moments, one of its major strengths, but often times these moments are alongside scenes that should be sad or intense. I know that most Asian films do much to try to tap on every emotion, not just dramatic or comedic or romantic, but in the great films these emotions are balanced better.

I think The Host is a decent monster movie and definitely worth a watch. Many people loved it far more than I did so there's a good chance that anyone new to it will have that experience, but for me, I felt it could have been far better.