REVIEWED - THE HOST/GWOEMULMEMORIES of Murder, Bong Joon-ho's singular Korean thriller from 2003, was notable for its brave collision of potentially jarring tones. Calling to mind that prize-winning chef from the English home counties who enjoys welding oysters to Crunchie bars, the film gleefully juxtaposed grim violence with scenes of broad comedy.
Bong goes one step further with The Host and delivers a delightfully rich gumbo containing playful farce, mainstream violence, political commentary and, most conspicuously, an aquatic carnivore apparently spawned by the union between an oil-slick and a gigantic bogey.
Surprisingly, the disparate ingredients complement one another quite nicely. This strange, strange film bears favourable comparison with such classic allegorical monster films as Godzilla and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Rejoice.
The Host begins with an English-language sequence in which careless American (boo!) scientists elect to pour a quantity of aged formaldehyde down a sink that empties into Seoul's Han River. Does formaldehyde really go off? If so, would it be likely to precipitate the evolution of giant killer tadpoles? Who cares. The mechanics of this flexible genre merely require that some source be offered for the key mutations. and rancid chemical preservative will do as well as anything else.
On its first outing in the South Korean capital, the voracious, lumbering beast - which is as conspicuously the creation of computers as Godzilla was of men in rubber suits - wreaks particular havoc among a family operating a food stand by the river.
Gang-du (Song Gang-ho), a decent, but bumbling young man, is unable to stop the animal attacking and apparently consuming his teenage daughter Hyeon-seo (Ko A-sung). Gang-du's angry father and his distraught sister, a talented archer, barely have time to accommodate their guilt before they become swept up in the heavy-handed, paranoid response to the crisis by a coalition of the Korean and American military.
Some of Bong's musings on geo-politics are, it must be said, a tad unsubtle, and the action may go on a little too long. But, enhanced by spooky, muted photography and driven by an insistently percussive score, The Host is never anything less than enthralling. A monster of a film.
