The Host Review
By David Kempler
What a poor host
Every once in a rare while a film comes along that manages to mesh multiple genres that flows beautifully. "The Host" meshes science fiction, horror, comedy and drama, but falls with a horrific thud. One of the great examples of meshing of multiple genres is "American Werewolf in London". There are scenes that are terrifying and laugh out loud moments. In "The Host" the audience is subjected to a bombardment of switching genres from comedy to thriller and back in a matter of seconds. Amazingly, it works on no level whatsoever.
The setting is Korea and the opening is reminiscent of Raymond Burr in "Godzilla". The American scientist is holding court over the local people and in this case he is committing an evil act of pollution. As a result we are supposed to believe that a mutant squid is on the loose and terrorizing the running Koreans, much like the Japanese running in all of the "man destroys environment and environment retaliates" stories that dominated science fiction in the early 1960's. Then it was Godzilla and Rodan and Mothra and Ghidra. Now we have the acrobatic giant squid.
To be fair, director Joon-ho Bong, is pulling our collective legs (wink wink) and making a camp comedy presumably in the hopes of creating a cult classic, and who knows, he might succeed. The problem is that cult classics that were originally intended as dramas become cult classics because they fail miserably and instead of commanding respect from the audience, they induce laughter when none was intended by the film's creator. Here, Bong is leading us around by the nose and telling us that we are watching something made poorly on purpose. That's not how it works. Then again, considering what passes for popular movies nowadays, he could turn out to have a runaway hit.
"The Host" is about as bad as it gets so I can only assume that it will do major box office. This will only encourage untalented directors to make more bad films. "The Host" is not funny. It has no moments of terror. It has no great drama. It is like the kid in school who tells bad jokes that causes everyone around him to wince. Maybe Bong was one of those kids.
