When we discussed our conflicting feelings about Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Brandon likened it to how Spanish critics have had to explain to English-speaking audiences that Pedro Almodóvar’s work in his native language has always been purposefully arch & overly theatrical. Specifically, the discourse revolved around allegations that English speakers perceive Almodóvar’s Spanish language works through a kind of veil of European exoticism while accurately identifying the more over-the-top and camp sensibilities in his recent films for audiences in the Western Hemisphere, which may also be the case with del Toro’s filmography. I’ve occasionally wondered about this in relation to last year’s Mickey 17, which was an overall disappointment to me as a Bong Joon-Ho fan, and which I dismissed as an example of his tendency to talk down to Western audiences that didn’t work for me this time, as it had in Snowpiercer. Was it possible that I was viewing Bong’s works in his native tongue through some kind of reverential veil and that Memories of Murder and Parasite were also over the top (outside of the moments of levity that were obvious across cultures) and I wasn’t picking up on it because I don’t speak Korean? Luckily, a viewing of Bong’s 2006 film The Host assuaged these doubts; when he’s going over the top, there’s no way to miss it. 

Half a decade after an American pathologist orders his Korean assistant to circumvent safety regulations about the disposal of toxic chemicals by directing him to pour (hundreds of bottles of) formaldehyde into a drain that eventually empties into the Han River, a mutant river beast emerges, killing dozens of people and abducting others. One of the abducted (and presumed deceased) is Park Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung), the daughter of single father Gang-du (frequent Bong collaborator Song Kang-ho), a lazy manchild with bleached hair. Gang-du assists his father Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong) in the operation of a riverside snack bar that they occupy as well, but his “assistance” is hampered by his apparent laziness and frequent napping, and his overall flaws are further communicated by his ill-advised choice to give his daughter a beer. The two of them are excited to watch Nam-joo (Bae Doona), Gang-du’s sister and Hyun-seo’s aunt, in the Olympic archery competition, but her primary character traits of being extremely proficient but hesitant and timid are telegraphed by her receipt of “only” the bronze medal as she allowed her time clock to run out. Hee-bong’s third child, Nam-il (Park Hae-il), is the only one to have gone to college, but his academic achievement has not netted him a job offer, and he’s taken refuge in the bottle. 

When the monster first emerges from the river, Gang-du manages to put up a pretty good effort, assisting a nearby American soldier who charges into the fray. He grabs Hyun-seo by the hand to flee and makes it some distance before falling, grabbing her again, and continuing to run, only to look down and see that he’s grabbed the wrong child in the fracas and is forced to watch helplessly as the monster brings her to the other side of the river and disappears. The Park family comes together in the wake of this tragedy, but during a mass memorial for the victims, a disease control team arrives in hazmat suits and advises that American scientists have theorized that some of the wounds left behind on survivors may indicate that the animal is a carrier for an unknown virus, and all present are shuttled off to a hospital for quarantine. Gang-du gets a call from Hyun-seo that indicates she’s still alive, and the Parks have to escape quarantine and work together to try and find the beast’s lair in the sewers before it’s too late. 

This is an unusual turn for Song Kang-ho as this is the first time I found it difficult to like him (at least in Bong’s filmography; he’s had a few effective villainous turns when working with Park Chan-Wook). It’s not his fault that his entire generation of the Park clan seems to be afflicted with narcolepsy, but his frequent sleepiness aside, he still does a lot of things that make him seem like a goofy old stoner in an American film about a guy who’s refused to grow up, even after having a child. That did not endear him to me as a character, especially when he later tries to explain to the authorities that he received a phone call from his presumed dead daughter and can’t hold it together long enough to explain this clearly. Instead he simply insists that “She’s deceased, but she’s not dead,” which doesn’t do him any favors, and not even the presence of his famous Olympian sister is enough to get anyone to listen to him. It’s in all of this that Bong is going very broad with the comedy, if it wasn’t already clear from the awkwardly long sequence in which Gang-du causes such a scene at the memorial that the rest of the Park family get involved in the bawl/brawl and security has to step in. It’s as campy as his movies for a Western audience, which comes through at the end when a forced lobotomy seems to suddenly make him hypercompetent. It’s not subtle, and now I can breathe a sigh of relief and rest assured I’m not simply elevating his Korean language films out of ignorance. 

There are other hallmarks of Bong’s work here, of course. It wouldn’t be a Bong Joon-Ho feature without some political commentary; it’s no surprise that American interference is the initial cause of the problem. On the cover of the DVD for the film is a pull-quote that says The Host “is on par with Jaws!” and while that’s a decent point of comparison, the film is much more like the original Godzilla in that it’s about an amphibious kaiju awakened (or in this case mutated) by American negligence, with tragic consequences for the respective coastal/island Asian nation states. Here, American interventionism continues throughout as a narrative thread, from the appearance of U.S. soldier Donald White at the first emergence of the beast from the river, to the American C.D.C. getting involved in quarantine and containment, eventually taking over the assault on the creature with a chemical weapon called Agent Yellow. That this deployment does virtually no long term damage to the creature (it’s up to Nam-il dousing it in gasoline, Nam-joo setting it ablaze with a burning arrow, and Gang-du stabbing it with a broken traffic post to bring it down) while harming if not killing the dozens of protestors who are opposed to the release of dangerous chemicals is, as always, a fun insight into Bong’s politics. Even when he’s doing a silly one, he’s still unmistakably at the helm. It’s worth noting as well that Gang-du’s aforementioned lobotomy was performed when he understood enough English to overhear a conversation in which an American scientist admits that there’s been no additional evidence of a virus and that they’re all in over their heads. 

In 2006 when the film was released, it was undoubtedly a bold new monster movie, but it lacks the timelessness of some of his other works; or perhaps what I mean to say is that if you already know Bong as an auteur after seeing some of his other films, this one may be a letdown, but if you approach it as a straight monster movie, you’re more likely to be satisfied. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond