Beyond the Multiplex

"The Host": It rose from American slime to destroy the Korean family! It must be destroyed!
Yes, the fishy, flippery, 60-foot-long thingummy who emerges from the polluted waters of the Han River in central Seoul to terrorize the populace in "The Host" is the result of poison from an American military facility. Well, what the hell else would cause such a horrible mutation? The fertilizer off Uncle Hang-soo's farm? I don't think so.

There's no question that Bong Joon-ho's film, which is the most satisfying monster movie in many years, takes some easy shots at the American military-technological colossus, and at the Korean government's sheepdog-like subservience to it. I'm inclined to interpret pretty much any junky old movie as a dialectical critique of whateverness, but in this case both the sanctimonious leftists and the contrarian critics are reading way too much into this simultaneously big-hearted and farcical adventure.

"The Host" may have one foot in the allegorical and mysterious world of contemporary Asian horror cinema, but the other one is closer to the sentimental big-screen spectacles of Steven Spielberg, or even Frank Capra. Bong's human villains are about as ambiguous as his monster: The Americans are diabolical Strangeloves and the Koreans are two-faced sycophants. His hero, on the other hand, is Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), a middle-aged loser with a bad blond 'do who slumbers away the days at his dad's riverside squid shack. (That isn't any kind of a joke: Koreans really, really like squid.)

Gang-du's dad (Byeon Hie-bong) is a grump and complainer, his beautiful sister (Bae Du-na) is a champion archer who loses an international match through indecision, and his brother (Park Hae-il) is an embittered alcoholic. About the only sensible one is Gang-du's daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-sung), a resourceful little person of about 9 who puts up with this family as patiently as she can manage. Do you suppose coming face-to-face with a giant mutant whatzit will give this struggling family a chance at redemption, or what?

There's tragedy beneath the funniest bits of "The Host" and humor beneath the most serious passages, which is one reason why I don't think it should be viewed as some earnest political parable. When the big kahuna emerges from the muddy Han and begins gnawing up picnickers, the resulting chaos is both upsetting and comic -- at least until it grabs Hyun-seo and disappears. Even then, the film's tone is constitutionally unsettled: At the stage-managed ceremony of public grieving after the monster's first attack, the entire Park family collapses in a slapstick heap. As a stern orange-suited bureaucrat seeks to quarantine those who (like Gang-du) have actually touched the beast -- reputedly the host of a dangerous virus -- he wipes out in a pratfall worthy of Oliver Hardy.

Hyun-seo is gone, all right -- but is she really dead? After Gang-du gets a cellphone call from somewhere deep in the Han River sewer system, there is hope. Of course, as Gang-du explodes to a sinister American doctor late in the film, "Nobody ever fucking listens to me!" But our plucky family of working-class washouts doesn't give up easily. Infighting and bickering all the way, they take on the Korean cops and military, the evil and meddlesome Yanks (who want to release a poison gas called Agent Yellow in the city center), and, oh yeah, a hideous mutant creature who has their beloved Hyun-seo stashed somewhere for some future snacktime.

While the ignorance, hypocrisy and lies on display in "The Host" may result from America's increasingly clumsy quest to subjugate the earth in the name of freedom, those are the tools of authority in all historical eras and all nations. It's always those at the bottom of the food chain (those whom nobody ever fucking listens to!) who must battle the mutant monsters. On the margins of high-tech consumer society, the squid-shack proprietors will always be with us (as Jesus observed). "The Host" is a thrilling ride and a sometimes dry, sometimes sweet comedy, but beneath all that is a humane and tragic view of life worthy of the greatest films. Even those without rubber monsters.

"The Host" opens March 9 in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Houston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., Washington, Seattle and Austin, Texas; and March 23 in Albany, N.Y., Baltimore, Charlotte, N.C., Cleveland, Columbus, Ohio, Des Moines, Detroit, Hartford, Conn., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Milwaukee, Monterey, Calif., Nashville, New Haven, Conn., Providence, R.I., Richmond, Va., Sacramento, Calif., Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Santa Fe, N.M., and elsewhere, with more locations to follow.

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