Studio: Magnolia 10100
Video: 1.85:1 Enhanced for 16:9 widescreen, color, 1080p HD
Audio: Korean or English 5.1 Uncompressed PCM, DTS-HD 5.1, DD 5.1
Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish
Extras: Deleted scenes, Commentary by Director Bong Joon-Ho, Making of The Host with Director, Storyboards, Memories of the Sewer, Physical special effects, Designing the creature, Bringing the creature to life, Puppet animatronix, Animating the creature, Cast & crew interviews, Actor training, Gag reel, Korean theatrical trailer
Length: 119 minutes
Rating: ***(*)
Some reviews for the theatrical release played up both the humorous approach and the environmental message of this monster movie and the combination intrigued me. Sadly there was very little of the first and the second was so overcome by the typical monster mayhem and its final destruction that the clever embroidery on the typical environmental theme of the monster having been brought about by the dumping of dangerous solvents in the river was mostly missed. (Some sort of U.S. Army lab’s dumping of hundreds of outdated bottles of Formaldehyde into Seoul’s Han River is pegged as the cause of the monster.)
Director Joon-Ho talks in the Making Of featurette about planning the story of the film while still in high school. He was influenced by Shyamalan’s film Signs, in which a family fights against alien invaders, and also by the Aliens series – which becomes obvious when you see the creature in The Host. The film’s struggling family is the Hee-Bongs, with a widower and three children plus one granddaughter. They have a snack stand on the banks of the Han (patterned after a real one the director knew of). The eldest son (with the daughter) is an immature 40-year-old who sleeps all the time and is thought worthless by his siblings.
So the strange creature suddenly appears out of the river and spreads havoc, chasing and eating people. The featurettes on the creature show its design and development. There are both animatronic portions of the creature employed, such as its mouth, plus computer CGI representations. It’s an effective monster and works well in some quite scary sequences, but it’s still a pussycat compared to Geiger’s Alien Queen. The second half of the overlong film revolves around its supposedly eating the granddaughter, the family’s grief, and their realization that she is still alive after getting a text message from her. They mount a wild escape from the authorities who have quarantined them – alleging they carry a purported virus from the monster, and together set out to find and save the child. Do they? Ah hah.
– John Sunier
