Before all those movies though, renowned South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho gave his own take on the tropes of monster movies with his 2007 motion picture The Host, and no, it has nothing to do with that one Stephanie Meyer novel. His work here feels like a precursor to Cloverfield in how it's very much preoccupied with examining how the presence of a rampaging monster affects the lives of average human beings, but otherwise, this is definitely a one-of-a-kind take on the whole monster movie subgenre and one that also provides plenty of thought and fun to go with its super unique story elements.
The human beings we're following amidst a larger-than-life scenario in The Host are single father/store clerk/constant snoozer Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), who tries to take care of his daughter, Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung), while also running his little shop with his father, Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong). As we get to know Park Gang-du in these early scenes of the movie, I was mighty impressed with how well the script by Bong Joon-Ho and Baek Chul-Hyun was able to firmly indicate this guy was a more flawed and schlubby sort of fella without making him come off as crude, gross or mean. Park Gang-du, as seen here, is a kind dude working hard to make a good life for his daughter (he's saved up so many dimes and even a few quarters to get her a proper cell phone!), he's just got a proclivity for sleeping and more than a bit of an absent-minded demeanor.
Our strongly defined and entertaining lead character properly established it's time to get to know our monster, one that emerges from the Han River. This beast (which I don't think gets a proper name in the movie nor in ancillary material related to it) exists thanks to heavy-duty pollution and toxic chemicals tossed into the Han River and now he's big enough to come onto the land and wreck havoc. During his rampage, he takes Hyun-seo and takes her to his sewer lair where she manages to contact her father and let him know she's alive. Now Park Gang-du and his family, which also includes college graduate brother Nam-il (Park Hae-il) and archer sister Nam-Joo (Bae Doona), are off on a mission to save his daughter and won't be stopping for anyone.
A clearly defined mission to save Hyun-seo drives the plot from there and it's a mighty entertaining one that keeps your attention even when no monster is around on the screen to cause mayhem, a super impressive accomplishment for any monster movie. Compared to the more stagnant dialogue and character actions that tends to crop up among human-oriented scenes in even the best monster movies, the script by Joon-Ho and Chul-Hyun gives the conversation sequences between Park Gang-du and his family members real vibrancy and life. These guys aren't putting aside their own individual conflicts and familial rivalries just because a dangerous creature is on the loose and that provides plenty of entertainment as they try to save their missing family member.
Actually, The Host hits its only real majorly distracting storytelling stumble as it enters the third act and the entire family gets separated. Their dynamic as a family unit is missed for sure but there's still plenty of entertainment to be had as they deal with their own issues, namely Park Gang-du being taken in by the government (who think Gang-du has been infected by the monster with a hazardous virus) and realizes that the government officials in charge of this whole operation may not be as sacrosanct as they seem. It's also here that we frequently cut back to Hyun-seo trying to survive in the monster's lair and man, these scenes are so well-shot, there's an inescapable claustrophobic sense emanated by the framing and camerawork in these segments that perfectly convey how trapped Hyun-seo must feel.
Bong Joon-Ho does a lot of great directing like that throughout and, since I'm talking about him here, I'll also note that, between The Host and Snowpiercer, I really don't mind or even notice all that much the supposedly massive tonal shifts that exist in his work. Maybe it's cause both motion pictures are super stylized projects from the get-go thus allowing for more elasticity in terms of the tones these stories can convey but I never found any of the tonal shifts here to be all that distracting at all. The various tonal alterations just feel like an organic extension of the crazier and unpredictable worlds the characters of Bong Joon-Ho's movies attempt to navigate. Those attempts may bring plenty of hardship for the characters themselves but when it results in superb movies like The Host, the audience most definitely prospers.
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