Host, The [Collector's Edition]

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It was back in 1954 that the Japanese gave us the cheesy but beloved "Godzilla," and, bless 'em, they followed it up with about 800 sequels and imitations. But for the past few years the Japanese seemed to have abandoned deep-sea creatures and taken a new delight in ghost stories, leaving it to the South Koreans to fill the sea-serpent gap. I must admit, with the 2006 release of "The Host" ("Gwoemul"), writer and director Bong Joon-Ho did a bang-up job resuscitating a corny old genre and putting it back on its feet. So much so that "The Host" became the biggest-grossing film in the history of South Korean cinema.

Not that "The Host" is any kind of masterpiece. In fact, it often seems purposely corny in order to emulate those older, cherished Japanese flicks. But it adds a healthy dose of sweet family love, fatherly devotion, singular grimness, and eventual solemnity that previous films in the genre lacked, all of which elevate it a notch above its competitors. Factor in the HD DVD's superb audio and video delights, and you get a motion picture worth considering.

Bong Joon-ho says on the disc's accompanying audio commentary that "The Host" came to him as a "what if." He says he was looking at Korea's Han River one day and imagined the Loch Ness monster gliding along its surface. Then he remembered a real-life event of a few years past where the government found an American military man dumping toxic waste into the water. Putting the two ideas together, he thought, what if somebody poured toxic chemicals into the river, and it mutated one of the creatures living there, mutated it so badly that it grew to enormous size. Thus was the story idea born.

Certainly, it is not a new idea, which is part of the fun. We all remember the many mutant monsters created by atomic radiation in films of the 1950s, the best of the lot being the giant ants in "Them!" Likewise, there was "Swamp Thing," created when a scientist went too far in trying to combine animal and vegetable life into a new type of being; and there was "The Toxic Avenger" and so on. "The Host" has an American military doctor (played by Scott Wilson) ordering an assistant to dump dozens of bottles of formaldehyde down the drain into the Han River, where it doesn't take long to transform one of the river's little critters into something resembling a tadpole the size of a bus, with teeth and legs and tentacles and a craving for human flesh. Watching this big, ungainly beast galumphing around the countryside, the creature looks not so much menacing as it does kinda cute. While I'm not sure that was the filmmaker's intent, it works well enough, giving "The Host" a sort of campy charm.

Now, here's the thing. Joon-ho could have just left things at that and brought in the army to do battle with the creature, all the while having it wreak havoc among the populace. But he goes a step further. He makes the story more intimate, more personal, by involving a specific family in the conflict. The family is the Parks, a grandfather, his two grown sons, a grown daughter, and one of the two son's young daughter. When the creature drags away the granddaughter, her father determines to go after it and either rescue his daughter or kill the beast or both. And the rest of the family join in his quest. This, too, we've seen before, most recently in Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds."

The grandfather of the clan is Hie-bon (played by Byun Hee-bong, an actor whom the director seems to like, as he has put him into several of his movies now). The grandfather owns a small refreshment stand on the river, where his oldest son, Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), works. Hie-bong considers his son Gang-du something of a simpleton, but actually the fellow's just a sleepy, good-natured, and quite loveable goof. Gang-du's daughter, Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung), is about thirteen years old and the most precious thing in Gang-du's life. When you meet her in the film, you can understand why; she's a sweetie, and the father's indefatigable perseverance in trying to save her is poignant, noble, and heroic.

The other two family members are Nam-il (Park Hae-il), chided throughout the story as a college graduate without a job, and Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na), a beautiful (well, there has to be at least one beautiful older girl in these kinds of films) competition archer. You can guess where she aims some of her arrows.

The movie itself follows most of the traditions of the genre. One that it doesn't follow, however, is exactly when the monster shows up. Usually, filmmakers like to keep the monster hidden from the audience for a while, building up the suspense. In this case, though, the director reveals the creature early on. Whether or not this is a good idea, I don't know. At best, it takes the emphasis off the monster and shifts the story line to the family, which is really the crux of the picture. Understand, there may be many viewers who would prefer that the movie just get on with the killing and maiming and forget about the family drama altogether. If that were to have happened, the movie would have been no more than ordinary. (I should also add, along these lines, that the film uses no music until well into the plot, another unusual touch, and then it's not always the most appropriate music. This is one curious film.)

Next, there is the matter of the film's politics. Not content merely to show a monstrous brute on the loose and a strong sense of family togetherness, the director insists upon adding a government cover-up, too, with the authorities spreading misinformation about a deadly virus. I suppose this is the filmmaker's nod to the political conventions of our day--trying to show how governments all lie to their people--but I found it a distraction that he might easily have avoided without any loss.

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