The Host

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“A monster emerges from Seoul’s Han River and begins attacking people. One victim’s loving family does what it can to rescue her from its clutches.”

My love of this style of movies started with Japanese Kaiju movies, but let me tell you – THIS IS AMAZING! This Korean monster movie has a great monster mixed with family dynamics and a little bit of a conspiracy.

Be careful how you treat the environment. The movie opens up in to a morgue (on a US military base) where an American pathologist forces his Korean assistant to unethically dump hazardous chemicals down a drain that vents into the Han River. We all know what that means – we’re making a monster!

Fast forward a few years later to food carts and a sleeping guy running one of the stalls. And our monster appears….

But the monster actually takes a backseat. Yes, it’s well made and scary. But the true struggle here is the family trying to save the teenage girl and at the same time avoid the authorities who are trying to capture the family because they had contact with the monster.

I’m not kidding. This is a really well done monster movie.

SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT

Three times I thought “If that character dies, I will throw the remote at the TV.” When the grandfather dies? I gasped and put a hand to my chest dramatically.

I was a bit pissed off but not pissed off at the ending. The girl struggled so hard to get back to her family. But she also succeeded in saving the poor little boy who was also trapped by the monster. And the dad was still able to be a dad by adopting him.

I’m not crying, you’re crying.