A widely understood trademark in contemporary monster films is that you don’t show off your creature in broad daylight. We’ve seen this phenomenon in Gareth Edwards’ lukewarm Godzilla and Guillermo del Toro’s kick-ass Pacific Rim (which, famously, never got a sequel). In adherence to this unwritten rule, the latter vexes by cloaking its mechs and kaiju in darkness, adding to their cool factor by having their distinct silhouettes loom imposingly. The former frustrates with a feature-length tease, too gun-shy to actually show the big monsters fighting in all their glory without obscuring the gargantuan details. Rarely, whether in good or bad monster films, do filmmakers make the bold choice to reveal their creatures outright in broad daylight. Then again, not every filmmaker is Bong Joon Ho.
What’s radical about the Academy Award-winning director’s 2006 monster movie, The Host, is that it wastes no time serving its dessert before dinner by answering every question one could have about its titular kaiju in the opening moments of the film. We get a breezy opening about some doctors, one of whom is a pre-Walking Dead Scott Wilson, and their wanton medical malpractice: dumping a bunch of formaldehyde into the Han River (something that actually happened in real life). What comes of it is a mutant tadpole that rampages on some unsuspecting beachgoers trying to have a lovely afternoon. It’s utter chaos. But amid the pandemonium, Bong doesn’t just have the creature mindlessly rampage about as every other kaiju does. He establishes the fish-like beast and its toolkit of monstrous attributes.
The nightmarish axolotl creature, just as dangerous on land as at sea, is armed with brutish strength, a dagger-like prehensile tail, and a gaping maw. It crawls at a brisk pace, but when hunting or making a tactical retreat, it uses that tail to swing under bridges like monkey bars before swan-diving back into the river to drown victims it drags back to its sewer hovel. In a single short scene, Bong establishes the creature as a palpable threat that refuses to obey a curfew, while also adding a layer of mystery to its “kill everything that moves” psychology. It’s equal parts King Kong and Godzilla, localized into a compact package. More importantly, it’s a kick-ass creature build.
Another strike against most monster movies is that they tend to fail at making their human characters as interesting as their creatures. The Host is a glowing exception to that. That’s not because its characters are superpowered oddities, part of a hypercapable militia, or a whiny group of sods you can’t wait to see bite the dust. They make you care because they’re a palpably fallible, relatable, dysfunctional family weathering this storm.
There’s the failed son, Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho); his dutiful yet unprosperous salaryman brother, Park Nam-il (Park Hae-il); Park Nam-joo (Bae Doona), their soft-spoken archer sister who tends to choke when the chips are down; and Park Hei-bong (Byun Hee-bong), their patient and nurturing father just trying to keep everyone afloat.
They’re all assholes to each other, but they’re the kind of relatable assholes you can look at your own family and see your loved ones in those bright spots, blemishes and all. And they come together because they love Gang-du’s daughter, Park Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung), a girl who just so happens to have been kidnapped by the monster and taken to its sewer dwelling. And just like that, The Host hooks viewers already leaning forward in their chairs for the creature, leaning even further forward to root for this family. They’re out of their depth, especially with the background American interest in messing with South Korea to use the environmental disaster of a monster it aided in creating, but are determined to rescue the smart sunspot their family revolves around.
The Host stands as a unicorn of a monster movie, firing on all cylinders, daring to make audiences laugh and cry in equal measure. Unlike so many of its peers, it’s unafraid to parade its creature in broad daylight for all to see. It’s a huge flex, even all these years later, and a delightful rarity in the genre worth celebrating, especially since its early aughts special effects still hold up. That Bong could muster a monster film—better yet, his first monster film—without feeling derivative of those that came before it and craft a work equal parts heart-wrenching, frightening, and goofy, without any one element diluting the others, is downright remarkable.
In a pantheon of monster movies that rarely shoot for the moon, The Host manages to have its cake and eat it too: proud of its creature design, yet telling a profoundly human story that’s far more than just a vehicle for the climactic kaiju money shot.
The Host is streaming on Hulu.
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