The Host (2006)

Acting:		Partying:		Girls:
Blood:		Language:		Gore:
Violence:		Humor:		Sexuality:
Torture:		Predictability:		Overall:

This movie has the best personality ever. "The Host" is a Korean monster film. Yes, a monster film. But what's great about this monster movie is human spirit behind the film's true tale...and that's what keeps you watching.

It all starts in a mortuary in 2002; a mortician and his assistant are cleaning the lab. The mortician is a clean freak and orders his assistant to dump dirty bottles of formaldehyde down the sink. The assistant protests, he knows that the sewers dump into the city's main river, Seoul's Han River. Despite his protestations the assistant carries out his duties and empties the bottles down the drain. Not just a few, but, as the camera pans a table top full of empty brown bottles, it seems there are hundreds.

Four years later, 2006, the Han River. We meet a father Park Hie-Bong (Hie-Bong Byeon) and an idiot savant son Park Gang-Du (Kang-ho Song) who own and run a mobile food store on the rivers bank. The idiot savant has a daughter Hyun-seo (Ah-sung Ko) who comes home from school embarrassed that her father didn't come to parent's day. The father sent the drunken uncle, Nam-il (Hae-il Park) instead. The grandfather is running the food shop while father and daughter watch their sister/aunt Nam-Joo (Du-na Bae) compete in a televised archery competition. The Park family is spread out and dysfunctional.

Moments later Hie-Bong makes his son deliver some beer to one of the mats on the rivers bank. Everyone is staring across the river at a strange object hanging from the underside of a bridge near by. Before anyone can figure out what it is, the object dives into the water and swims to the bank. Gang-Du throws a beer at it and the thing pulls it under. The thing disappears, but not for long, it has immerged farther up the river bank and is running toward the group near Gang-Du. It's a mutated slimy deformed fish thing...it's pretty friggin awesome. What follows is a fantastic monster stomp on the riverside reminiscent of a Godzilla rampage. The monster grabs people, smashes people and swallows few. Gang-Du and a random American try to fight the beast.

Meanwhile after after seeing Nam-Joo's defeat on TV, Hyun-seo walks outside the food shop to witness masses of people running and screaming, her father is running toward her, he grabs her hand and she stumbles and falls. Without looking Gang-Du reaches for his fallen daughter, grabs her wrist and keeps running. A few feet later he realizes he's grabbed the wrong girl and Hyun-seo is still struggling to get to her feet the monster right on her heels. Gang-Du witnesses the monster sweep up his little girl with its tail and dive back into the river. Hyun-seo is presumed dead.

Later at a memorial for the dead the Park family assembles and has ...

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