The Host
Director: Joon-ho Bong

Magnolia Pictures 2006

By Zach Stephenson

The ratio of pull-quote praise from critics to people who see The Host and think it sucks ass is worrisome. On the DVD, some chub says this is the long-time-coming companion piece to Jaws. No it’s not. But knee-jerk lines like that combined with the words “monster” and “foreign cinema” certainly made people decidedly over-stoked for the stateside theatrical release of a movie that is an Anaconda-zilla dead ringer, minus rappers and times subtitles.

This is the underdog tale of a narcoleptic kiosk owner, who is painted as a loner, invalid type. Once, he was a bright, young chap, but eventually he became stranded on the fringe of society due to a lack of protein—possibly the byproduct of having a boozehound father. We find him one moment following his father’s wobbly footsteps, offering brews to his 10 year-old. With the next, there is a giant man-eating mudskipper on the attack and he finds himself one of two daunting males willing to take it on. In hindsight, that’s a bad move, because the mutant mudskipper kidnaps his daughter in retaliation. Sigh.

Those witty Koreans have developed a spectacular origin-tale for the creature, except they Xeroxed the King of the Monsters’, replacing the moral-compass catalyst of an atom bomb with some illegal chloroform dumping ordered by an evil American scientist. There’s also an allusion to Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, but you probably guessed that, mudskipper unseen.

The main failing with The Host is a no-brainer and the same reason why Rob Zombie’s Halloween “reimagining” will be quickly forgotten after its release on August 31: the film treats its subject of horror like a Transformer. Where shots of the creature need to be short, abrasive and indirect, they are front and center, as if the camera is following a sluggish linebacker. Further dressing you up for the letdown, R-rating aside there is a severe shortage of carnage. The filmmakers put a drill to someone’s head but don’t include a close-up of metal-to-skull. And, whether you are one of the lepers who bought advance tix to Captivity, or wept over the recent passing of Ingmar Bergman, why else check out low budget, foreign horror? Lucio Fulci made a career out of finding innovative methods to gouge out eyes. The Host is content with showing Muddy fucking Mudskipper crossing a bridge.

This discourse of The Host is written by Zach Stephenson for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007.