The Host - The running fish

Monster movies come and go and, these days, they're all pretty much the same.  The question is, 'Can a film repackage the same old story enough to make it an enjoyable experience?' I'm glad to say that, with the Korean film, 'The Host,' the answer is a firm YES.

The story itself is as old as it comes - big monster/scared humans.  However, this film is just too much dumb fun to be forgotten.  99% of it is subtitled (a couple of English speaking actors pop up here and there, so you'll have to be used to reading to enjoy it) and I guess it's hard for me to concentrate on actors' performances, but I think the central family who gets caught up in an attempt at fleeing/hunting one hell of a weird fish-monster-thing are believable as a family unit.

For a horror film there's not that much gore (and when I say 'gore' I mean the 'red stuff'), the 'horror' comes from watching some really helpless civilians fall foul to the beastie.  The special effects are just about passible.  Sometimes you look at the monster and can see that it's not really there, other times it really does interact well with the environment.

What really elevates 'The Host' over so many similar films are the little touches.  There seem to be plenty of 'random' moments in the story which aren't really connected to the central plot.  It maybe a throw-away line from a random extra who only appears in the film to say these few words.  Or it may be the added character traits and backstory which have been put in to actually flesh out the characters, rather than just making them pure 'monster-fodder.' It's pretty 'self-knowing' though never really comes across as a comedy/horror, despite the antics making me smile on more than one occasion.  The family's interactions which each other are just quite fun to watch as they bicker like the best of us between them.

Perhaps the film isn't quite so 'random' as I thought it was.  The Korean culture appears to be different enough to our Western ways of doing things to mean that occasionally I wondered whether people would really act the way the characters did, only to conclude that the reason they were behaving that way was because they simply do things differently in certain situations.  Either way, the film was enormous fun and, if you're into your monster movies then it's definitely worth adding to your collection (and it is nearly two hours long, so prepare for a monster-marathon watch!). 

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one