Delayed Reaction: The Host

Premise: A monster comes out of a river and starts killing people. A father and his family go to rescue his daughter from it.

Yep. This is definitely a monster movie from the director of Parasite. I've seen four Bong Joon-Ho movies at this point, and they give off a heavy "reformed class clown" energy. His movies lean right up against sincerity, then take a hard turn in some other direction. Not in a way that feels like some sort of defense mechanism (i.e. someone cracking jokes because they don't know what to do with their emotions). It's more like he finds straight sincerity boring. Take something like the scene when the family mourns the "death" of Hyun-sea. It starts with them mourning in a genuine moment, then turns into over the top weeping to the point where they are calling attention to themselves. It's cartoonish and sincere. That's a tough balance to pull off.

There's something in his mostly English movies (Snowpiercer, Okja) that I've find a little too self-awarely quirky. Let's just call it "Tilda Swinton". I prefer the tone of this or Parasite. The Host is a monster movie. It just has some light social commentary and comedy thrown in. Even if you take out all of Bong Joon-Ho's flourishes, it's still a pretty good story about a monster, a screwed-up father trying to make right by his daughter, and public hysteria. He just gives it that little extra.

I'll go ahead and say it though. The CGI for the monster isn't great. Like most CGI, after 14 years it doesn't really hold up. That's understood going in. And, I do appreciate that he doesn't shy away from showing the monster because of that fear. We see the monster pretty early and in the light of day, because the suspense of the movie isn't the threat of the monster. It's what that monster stirs in people that creates most of the obstacles in the film.

The cast is pretty good. I only specifically recognize Kang-ho Song, who shows up in a lot of Bong Joon-Ho's movies. I'm not great with Korean faces though. I just don't see enough Korean movies to recognize a lot of them. Regardless, they do a good job switching gears from action movie to drama to comedy.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend