The Host

Similar in a lot of ways to Steven Spielberg’s recent War of the Worlds update, The Host follows a dysfunctional family as they band together to save one of their own from the clutches of a bloodthirsty monster. The film also features a fairly ludicrous subplot about the South Korean government’s efforts to contain the scare by blaming it on a virus, going so far as to isolate anybody who’s come into contact with the beast. While there’s certainly a lot within The Host to admire – the creature’s initial attack is as thrilling and exciting as one might’ve hoped, for example – filmmaker Bong Joon-ho bogs the proceedings down with an egregiously overlong running time and an unwarranted (and unwanted) emphasis on the political ramifications of the monster’s existence. By including such blatant parallels to SARS and other similar crises, Bong all but ensures that virtually none of these characters behave realistically (ie there’s a bonafide monster running around, and the viewer is supposed to believe that people would more concerned with some made-up virus). It just comes off as a desperate attempt by the filmmaker to shoehorn his own agenda into the proceedings, which is a shame given the effectiveness of certain portions of The Host.

** out of ****