Movie Review: The Host (Gwoemul)

As referenced in a previous post, one of my most personally anticipated movies of the first half of 2007 was The Host, or Gwoemul. To give a little background, as few probably know about this movie, The Host was the highest grossing movie in South Korean history, coming out in 2006. The movie is basically advertised as a modern Godzillia movie with a mutant-ish beast rampaging a city.

Despite, or possibly because of my expectations, I was pretty disappointed, but not for an expected reason. The movie was not too stupid-monster-movie to enjoy but was in fact, probably too little of that. The movie ended up suffering from being in an identity crisis. All at the same time it tried to be a monster movie, have a family message, make weird social commentaries about South Korea, be a political commentary on S. Korea, be a political commentary on the United States, and be kind of conspiracy theory-ish, all the while making fun of itself at every opportunity.

Basically, this was just too much for one movie. You'd start to get into the political thriller/commentary part of the movie about the harsh control exhibited by the S. Korean and especially U.S. government. Then, you'd be presented with (what I hope was a failed attempt at) comic relief of a grieving family literally falling all over each other and fighting in grief. Or, you'd see the father of the main family describing the importance of family after escaping the clutches of government officials and the monster, and then see that his speech put all his children to sleep. It just didn't really make a lot of sense.

Easily the best part of the movie was the monster itself. As monster movies go, what was impressive about this was that it showed the creature almost immediately. That first scene of attack is definitely the best part of the movie. The whole theater immediately got jumpy and excited. Unfortunately there wasn't much opportunity to see the monster just kind of going at it. In general, it was a good mix of being a pretty new and creative looking monster, so but not so over the top or large (was basically the size of like a Triceratops; yes i just referenced a dinosaur for size) that it wasn't stupid looking.

Overall, worth seeing for the monster and some quick entertainment, but will be almost certainly be confused when you walk out of the theater.