THE HOST REVIEW

"Is it good? Is it good? Everyone says it's great. Did you see it? How was it? Is it any good?"

That's pretty much what happens when you mention Bong Joon-Ho's THE HOST in polite company. So, to answer the question: yes, it's everything you've heard. It's really that good. Not the movie I expected, but much better than I would have ever thought possible.

The CGI has been fixed after Cannes and, except for a couple of shots at the end where they apparently ran out of money and had to resort to some older, weaker CGI shots, it's visually impeccable. I'm not sure what THE HOST means (not sure what THE DEPARTED means either - the two movies could swap titles with no discernible difference) but watching this flick I was grateful for the return of Song Kang-Ho, the return of Bong Joon-Ho, more Bae Doo-Na, and some intensely strong work from a fistful of Korean character actors.

Man, this family hates each other. Song Kang-Ho is a semi-retarded adult who sleeps all day and steals bites of the customer's food at the Han River snack shack his dad owns (Byun Hee-Bong with a mouthful of rotten teeth). His sister is an emotionally locked-down Olympic archer (Bae Doo-Na) and his brother is a student radical turned failed salaryman who's desperate to hold onto a job, any job (Park Hae-Il) and he'll punch people until they give him one.

The focus of the family is Hyun-Seo, Song Kang-Ho's bratty daughter who nevertheless is the apple of everyone's eye. Until a monsterous anus with teeth on legs lurches out of the river and eats her. Convinced that she's still alive, the four are forced into uncomfortable proximity with one another as they hunt down this BFM (Big F++king Monster) with all the tools at their disposal: a couple of shotguns, a box of change, some street signs and a few molotov cocktails.

With a minimum of care and attention, Bong Joon-Ho has made probably the most realistic monster movie to ever hit the screen. It makes you wonder how rotten so many other directors are that they've never had these ideas before because they are all so real there's a forehead-slapping "of course" quality to them. There're international implications to the monster, military responses, government contractors swarming around like flies, but all of this is somewhere else, with dribs and drabs of it bleeding into our perception because Bong's movie is firmly locked into what happens to this family as they get eaten up by the government buereacracy.

The set-pieces are startling. I haven't jumped during a movie since god-knows-when and I jumped twice in this one. And the initial monster attack is so different from what you were expecting that you actually experience actual emotions during a special effects set piece.

The only drawback to the movie is that I was expecting a "Yeah! Rock On!" kind of ending. I wanted one. If any characters deserved the much-derided Hollywood ending, it was these guys. And I didn't get one. Bong Joon-Ho isn't interested in making blockbusters or having the audience walk away pumping their fists in the air. Which is too bad because the people he makes movies about are the kind of people you actually want to cheer on. He just makes it hard for you to do that, and that's what makes him so good.