“Fred, the axolotl’s out of the bowl again!”
This was described by many Western critics as a Monster movie with a twist, but it isn’t that much of a monster movie, even though the creature is pretty cool.
It actually isn’t much of anything, the focus of the film switches back and forth along the way from a social commentary, to a family drama, to an indictment on government cover-ups, all with a big axolotl looking thing running around in the background eating people.
To start with those damn Americans order the dumping of dangerous chemicals into the main river in Korea. As with Nazis in the 70s and 80s it now seems you can have Americans do anything bad and the audience will simply nod, I don’t know if President Bush ever thought that would go on his CV “turned Americans into a cinematic Nazi equivalent as indefensible bad guys in the span of one decade”.
Anyway a few years later a large monster appears and eats some Koreans, but that is beside the point.
At this stage the point is that a small family run kiosk happens to be located on the shore of the river. It is manned by the family senior, his loser son Gang-Du and his cute 10 year old daughter Hyun-Seo, who is the pet of the entire family being the only child. Also around but not present are the high achiever daughter Nam-Joo, a world class archer, and also high achieving other son Nam-Il, both of whom resent Gang-Du for his perceived stupidity and laziness.
At the initial the never before seen monster is spotted as what appears to be a 9 – 10 foot black slimy thing hanging from under a bridge in full view. A pretty tall story given its size and proximity to a large number of people but there you go, perhaps a younger 8 foot version was better at “blending in”.
Once ashore the 15 foot beast (stay tuned it seems to change size a lot) wreaks havoc, perhaps it is its way of saying “Don’t you look at me”, but basically it kills a bunch of people and takes Hyun-Seo away into the river across to the other bank… and swallows her.
Case closed right? Monster movie for sure.
No, now the movie changes again, we forget the monster and change tack as the army comes in and quarantines the entire area The Crazies and 28 Weeks Later style. Pictures of the deceased are laid out in full view of mourners, including one of Hyun Seo.
The family now include all those mentioned above who for some reason blame Gang-Du for allowing a creature of variable size, but definitely too big for a fishbowl, take a small girl away. In any case the family members swear revenge on the beastie.
The army questions all witnesses to the event and upon learning that Gang-Du was actually in contact briefly with the creature he and many others are isolated for testing. Reports come out that the creature is the “Host” of a virus that is yet to be fully defined aside from the assumption that it could be very nasty and contagious.
Moving on, Gang-Du receives a call from Hyun-Seo – she ain’t dead after all – and the film becomes a rescue mission, only Gang-Du is literally stuck in a plastic tent at this stage, and no-one will believe his claims in any case.
He and his family escape from captivity with disturbing ease (if there really was a highly contagious killer-virus that is), and the rest of the film follows their exploits as they search for Hyun-Seo and the monster.
The monster is there but it seemed to be as more of a distraction from the various other messages that the filmmakers were trying to sneak in along the way.
Put another way the interactions with the monster were few and far between, and when they did come they were hardly scary or breathtaking.
The appearance of the creature was well designed, but as alluded to the size seemed to fluctuate more than Oprah. Sometimes it appeared gargantuan, at other times it seemed half as big.
Before the credits roll there is sacrifice, death, betrayal, fatal mistakes are made, separation and my favourite unnecessary surgery, all with the beautiful backdrop of deliberate government misinformation and cover-up.
I liked The Host, but at two hours it was just too long. As a “monster” movie it was only OK but with all the other elements thrown in it grew a little muddled and became unfocussed, leading to me wondering exactly what audience the filmmakers were targeting.
Final Rating – 7 / 10. This isn’t your typical Hollywood fare to say the least, but that doesn’t necessarily say it is a great movie.
