(No explicit spoilers, but spoiler-sensitive readers should watch the movie first and come back later.)

A monstrous crisis in South Korean national identity.

On the surface, The Host looks a lot like any other monster movie. It showcases an evil beast hell-bent on the destruction of the local population. And yet, even here director Joon-ho Bong refuses the conventions of the genre he’s working within. He shows us the monster right from the start (almost in the first scene) and almost always in broad daylight rather than hiding the special effects in dark nighttime shots. Rather than glorifying the monster’s destruction (the disaster porn model) or reveling in the fear it creates (the horror model), he pitches the film at…

All of Bong Joon-ho’s movies are about monsters, some more literally than others. In “Memories of Murder,” the monster is the boogeyman, ripped from the headlines and hiding in the darkness. In “Snowpiercer,” the monster is the abstract force of capitalism, rotting us from the inside out as we eat each other to survive and maintain some semblance of order at the end of the world. And in “The Host,” the wild 2006 genre mash-up that firmly established Bong as a creative force of nature and afforded him the cache to make “Mother” in 2009, the monster is… well, it’s an actual fucking monster, with slimy skin and a prehensile tail and a sweet tooth for small children.

The special…

What do you do if you're Bong Joon-ho and you've just made Memories of Murder, one of the single most devastating portrayals of police brutality and serial killers ever put to screen? (seriously, my eyes are welling up thinking about it. Watch it.)

The answer is go for an insane comedy-drama monster movie about a fucked up family who're on a mission to hunt down a monster causing mayhem and murder on the banks of the Han river in Seoul.

Throw in some clever political commentary about police incompetence in Korea, the US military's flippantly arrogant policies abroad (and how the Korean government typically kowtows to them), and government bunglings in general for good measure.

Test the family at every…

I read a lot of analyses of The Host and know that its monster basically represents the historical trauma of South Korea. The firmly anti-authoritarian film references several real-life historical events and satirizes most explicitly American interference. This is all nifty and I got at least some of that when I first watched it (it’s hard to miss something obvious like the use of a chemical named Agent Yellow in the climax), but to be honest I mostly love this film for its surface pleasures.
The Host is the rare monster movie that showcases a cool monster - and the CGI still holds up! - but also presents a compelling human story. As you would expect from Bong Joon-ho the…

A Walk Amongst Monsters #3

I remember watching this with my father years back when it was released on DVD. we were both big fans of monster movies and it looked scary which drew me in. We had a good time during the film and I remember my father really liking it. I liked it, but was disappointed with the lack of cool monster action and any real scares. 

Well here I am so many years later rewatching this for the first time and not much has changed. The opening and closing monster attacks are amazing with great cinematography (just like the whole the movie) and a real sense of urgency and intensity. The monster also looks sick even with…