Blond Ambition

The Host (Gwoemul) - 2006
Director: Joon-ho Bong

In a lot of the write-ups for Cloverfield, this year's surprise box-office hit, I noticed many comparisons to The Host, a South Korean monster flick from 2006. Reviewers point out similar plot elements and in a surprising number of cases, give the nod to The Host as the superior film.

I agree with the first part. Both films feature treacherous bridge crossings, nerve racking tunnel searches, and the main character's return to "ground zero" of the monster attacks to rescue trapped girls.

However, there's no question for me that Cloverfield is the better of the two. Where Cloverfield is sharp and insightful, The Host is often clumsy and silly.

One need look no further than how the families in both movies are shown dealing with their respective grief for proof of this.

Cloverfield, has the main character somberly informing his mother of his brother's death in a quiet, understated cell phone conversation that was more moving than I would have expected from a monster flick.

In The Host, what should be a important family moment becomes laughable when staged as a temper tantrum which degenerates into a ridiculous kick fight between the characters who are literally rolling around on the floor. Was that supposed to be poignant or funny? If I had to pick a point where the movie lost me, it was RIGHT there.

As I've written earlier, for me Cloverfield is a metaphor for the power of an unrealized love.

Unfortunately, because I never connected with the characters, I found The Host to be no more than a straight-forward, and not so subtle, statement on the perils of unbridled Western (American) style capitalism.

Godzilla, the 1950s era giant monster movie, was born out of Japan's reaction to the U.S. dropped atomic bombs that ended World War II. One got the feeling that while the Japanese film pointed the finger of blame on capricious tinkering with nuclear weapons, it's ire is directed at mankind in general, rather than specifically at the United States.

On the other hand, The Host's South Korean director, Jooh-ho Bong, seems to hold the U.S. singularly accountable for the creature and is damn angry about it.

I don't have a problem with the specifics of the politics the director is trying to convey. I loved the new Day of the Dead. It took many satirical shots at different elements of America's consumer driven culture. But the underlying drama didn't suffer.

In The Host, the director's vision is expressed in such a heavy handed manner that it gets in the way of the story.

The movie follows an already dysfunctional family that is further ripped apart when a mutated creature emerges out of the Han River next to where they run a small snack bar.

The cause of the mutation is an American doctor, with apparent control issues, who carelessly dumps formaldehyde into the river because the bottles are dusty (out with the old, in with the new). His South Korean assitant is a reluctant, yet willing participant in this.

The Host introduces the main character asleep at the counter of the family store. His dark Asian hair is frosted blond and he's laying face-down on a pile of coins.

While the creature certainly is a villian. The highly Westernized South Korean culture, bombarded by MTV style television and an atmosphere of conspicuous consumption, is portrayed as equally dangerous.

The OTHER American character is a doctor who runs a kafkaesque hospital that functions to quaranteen people exposed to a virus carried by the creature from the general population. There, "patients" are subjected to horrible treatment in the sterile, dehumanized facility.

The doctor is a shallow, straw-man who comes across no better than a sterotypic mad scientist from a 1950's monster film (or the X-Files).

While the military doctors in Cloverfield are equally pragmatic and emotionally detached from their suffering patients as their counterparts in The Host, they don't come off as cartoonish.

The Host's evil doctor, preparing for some curious form of brain surgery, points to the main character's head and declares "the trouble is in there."

This scene was ham-handed and did nothing to advance the plot. Watching it, I had to ask myself WHY did the director choose to include it?

The answer was that so HE could make HIS broader statement (the mind altering effect of Western culture). Unfortunately, his point is made at expense of credible story development. Thus, taking me out of the experience as a viewer.

By the movie's unsubtle end, the hero is sitting once again at the counter of the family store. But this time, made wiser by the ordeal, he's more alert to the world around him and his formerly blond colored locks are back to their natural dark shade.

I really wanted to like The Host, but found Joon-ho Bong's attempt to add social commentary to his story more distracting than Godzilla's fake rubber suit.