Its Not 300

Striking out from Korea, land of hammers and mayhem comes this year's surprise foreign film joy. The Host debuts this week on Friday, March 9th.

As many of the Lodgers know, Korea has been on the New Wave of film from Asia. Host director Bong Joon-Ho made his first big mark with a Police Noir film placed in 80's dictatorship Korea. He followed up with the release of The Host in Korea on July 27, 2006 and hit #1 Best Selling Film of 2006 with 13,019,740 nationwide. The next closest U.S. film was The Da Vinci code with a miniscule 3,339,082 .

(The opening formaldehyde scene is based on a real-life political scandal with U.S. dumping of chemicals into the Korean environment. An apology was later issued by the U.S. 8th Army.)

The film was originally titled "Creature" or Gwoemul in Korean. Its believed that the creature is a "host" for some kind of mutated virus which gives us its U.S. title. Synopsis is: Mutated monster rises out of city river and attacks innocent citizens. From what I can tell of this film, it takes a kind of loser family, and drives them to find courage to search for their youngest female family member taken by "the host". I would say its a funny-monster movie. (Or imagine your little brother got kidnapped and the only people with you are your crazy uncle, lazy cousin, frantic sister, not to mention your un-athletic self. At least thats how I imagine it for myself.)

Bong mentions that he found inspiration from a quirky childhood reading about Loch Ness and other monsters. In a way, he's a member of the Nessie Alliance.


Local Showings going on 03.09.07:

Bellevue, WA: Lincoln Square Stadium 16

Lynnwood, WA: Alderwood 16

Seattle, WA: Neptune Theatre

This seems to be one of the biggest releases of a South Korean film in the States. For Asian films overall, its refreshing that American audiences can now be exposed to Asian movies that don't deal with magical kung-fu and ancient empires. Asian-Americans everywhere will rejoice at their new liberation from stereotypes and induction into modernity.

Bong Joon-Ho has shown this film at the Toronto Film Festival and Cannes. Its received a lot of good attention and continues to raise the bar in film medium and drag the audiences out of mainstream movie constructs. Although, the Host does have a resemblance of a blockbuster film from Hollywood and less of the edgy extreme plot some of us are used to from Korea. It still remains essentially Korean by driving a family together into the old-school Confucian ethics against the new modern monsters we've created.