Looking Back at THE HOST: Monster Movie Meets Black Comedy

The premiere of A Quiet Place years ago reminded me of another film in which the protagonists’ family tries to save the youngest from a beast spreading death and destruction. Unlike John Krasinski’s horror, however, the Korean The Host directed by Bong Joon-ho plays much more freely with genre, serving — alongside a typical monster movie — a tragicomic story of an exceptionally dysfunctional family, whose dedication often goes hand in hand with clumsiness. This makes even the most dramatic moments a cause for laughter, while the comedy is imperceptibly concluded in a very painful way.

The plot can practically be summarized in one sentence — when a mutated creature kidnaps little Hyun-seo (Ko Asung, Snowpiercer), the girl’s family sets out to rescue her. The director focuses on the protagonists’ efforts to find the child, pushing the titular monster into the background.

Before the proper action of the film begins, however, we learn almost everything about the beast, starting with what caused its birth (in the opening scene, based on a real event, an American scientist played by Scott Wilson unknowingly orders his Korean subordinate to pour chemicals into the Han River), and ending with presenting it in full glory during a spectacular sequence of its attack on people.

It is as if Bong wanted to strip it of the entire aura of mystery typical of monster films, turning the creature not into a sinister force, but into a side effect of harmful human activity, a mistake that has taken the form of a rampaging predator. The director is not interested in the creature’s consciousness or the purposefulness of its actions — its entire essence is expressed by the fact that it should not exist.

That it is an error that the military and bureaucrats want to fix with methods just as ruthless as those that brought it to life. Ironically, the protagonists’ family is at one point treated in a similar way.

Watching Bong’s films, currently one of the most popular Korean directors (The Host was for almost a decade the highest-grossing film in local cinemas), one cannot resist the impression that he loves his characters, regardless of whether they are good or bad, foolish, intelligent, or simply imperfect.

One only needs to recall the policemen conducting an impossible investigation in Memories of Murder (2003), the elderly woman desperately seeking salvation for her son accused of murder in Mother (2009), a handful of desperate people fighting the caricature of life aboard a train that cannot stop in Snowpiercer (2013), or Okja (2017), where people equally convinced of their ideals stand in the way of a little girl’s love for her super-pig. The worlds of the Korean director surprise not so much narratively as emotionally — they strike with understanding for their characters in situations where such understanding is the hardest to offer.

The Host is constructed around — often leading to misfortune — the mistakes of its protagonists, especially Gang-Doo, the kidnapped girl’s father, a lazy and not very bright man, a glutton who additionally suffers from narcolepsy. It is his actions that lead to his daughter’s abduction and the later death of another family member. In the hands of a less empathetic director, both of these moments could alienate viewers from such a character, but in Bong’s film Gang-Doo remains until the very end a protagonist we sympathize with, root for, and even understand.

This is helped by the extraordinary Kang-ho Song (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, The Good, the Bad, the Weird), who combines almost childlike confusion and helplessness with the tragic dimension of a man trying to overcome his own limitations. It is worth recalling here the scene of Hyun-seo’s abduction, as it perfectly presents the director’s great ability to freely juggle tone and genre within just a few shots.

Initially unaware of the panic caused by the monster’s appearance on the Seoul riverbank, the girl is quickly pulled by her father into a frantic escape from the beast. The situation is dramatic, all the more so because we have already seen what the grotesque creature is capable of. At one point the father and daughter fall, but Gang-Doo, without even looking back, grabs Hyun-seo’s hand and they continue running. After a few steps, the protagonist (and with him the viewers) realizes that he is dragging along… another child. Astonishment appears on the faces of the man, the unfamiliar girl, and a second later her father, who takes his daughter away.

The drama thus turns into a comedy of errors — or rather one error, terrible in its consequences, when we see Hyun-seo left alone, with the charging monster approaching her. In a single moment it snatches the girl with its tail and jumps with her into the river. The entire scene lasts a little over a minute, but in that short time Bong manages, in an absolutely masterful way, to extract from the situation a palette of diverse emotions and impressions without making a single false step.

There are many such moments in The Host (the family’s wailing, which turns into a parody of mourning, is probably my favorite), but most importantly, the Korean director does not place playing with convention above the drama of his characters. The perversity of these situations is consistent with the nature of the characters — the clumsy Gang-Doo, his sister Nam-Joo (Doona Bae, Cloud Atlas, Sense8), a talented but indecisive archer, their brother Nam-il (Hae-il Park, Memories of Murder), intelligent but reaching for the bottle too often, and Hie-bong (Hee-Bong Byun, Okja), the weary father who alone tries to hold the family together.

Their determination to save the child makes them a threat to themselves, but also to those hunting the monster. Is it only because the Park family does not agree with the official version of events, which states that Hyun-seo is dead? Or perhaps because they themselves are imperfect, incomprehensible, ridiculous, yet at the same time dangerous? Just like the monster.

For Bong, the human being is always the most interesting, complex, and surprising element of his films, even more so than the sensational premise or the fantastic presence. The Host already promises with its very title an encounter with the unknown, a true monster movie reminiscent of a cross between Godzilla and Creature from the Black Lagoon, but the director is not really interested in the creature.

He prefers to tell a story about a family, about the attempt to overcome one’s own weaknesses, mutual support despite completely different personalities, and their unequal struggle against everyone around them.

And although the monster is reduced here to being merely a threat, it too receives a moment in which it reveals a more playful side, when it decides to toy with its victim. Almost like a human.