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The Host (Gwoemul)

DFI Cinema

/ Feature Narrative / South Korea / 2006 / Colour
In Korean / Arabic, English subtitles
N/A
Rated: Mature subject matter. Not suitable for minors. Individuals under the age of 18 are not admitted into cinemas.


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Synopsis

Few things say ‘horror film’ quite like a really good monster – and monsters tend to arise from some of our most basic fears. Sometimes, they want to eat us (think ‘Jaws’, ‘An American Werewolf in London’, ‘The Blob’ or ‘Little Shop of Horrors’); sometimes they just want to kill us (‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’). Now and then, the beasts like to assimilate our minds or bodies (‘The Thing’, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’); sometimes, they live in our dreams (‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’); and then there are those pesky xenomorphs that violate our bodies to incubate their young (the ‘Alien’ franchise).

Monsters are commonly the result of experiments gone wrong (the modern ground zero being Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’), or a catastrophic side effect of careless science – examples are as varied as ‘Empire of the Ants’, ‘The Fly’ and ‘Godzilla’ – and Bong Joon-ho’s ‘The Host’ falls squarely in this camp.

Some years after a thoughtless scientist insists that his assistant dump a huge amount of formaldehyde into the Han River, a giant mutated water creature emerges to terrorise the locals – and soon kidnaps Hyun-seo, the daughter of dim-witted but well-meaning Gang-du. To rescue her will be difficult, what with the authorities trying to contain a viral breakout caused by the monster, but Gang-du’s family are up for a challenge. Equal parts comedy and horror, ‘The Host’ broke South Korean box-office records on its release in 2006.