The Host

Every so often mainstream critics in mainstream papers (i.e. not fangoria or whatever) will get all positive about a "genre" film i.e. horror, sci-fi etc. Typically this is when some foreigners make a genre film, thereby giving the whole enterprise a respectable broadsheet gloss. At this point the logic goes; 'cool, if someone who wouldn't normally like this kind of film likes this kind of film then I'm really going to love it'. So anyway, my expectations were high for The Host, and as everyone knows that's poison. For some reason I never learn.

It all starts out nicely (except the main character is the swollen faced guy from Sympathy For Mr Vengeance who I find it really hard to look at) setting things up for what would have been a totally AMAZING finale if proper genre conventions had been observed. But unfortunately genre conventions are not observed in Korean films (as anyone who has seen the quite brilliant Save the Green Planet will tell you) so we get a film that twists about all over the place showing off and surprising the audience, but it gets lost, and so it never really manages to deliver the required payoff; you know, the bit where Ripley says 'get away from her you bitch' or the bit in series three where Buffy blows up The Judge with a rocket launcher. Instead we get clever meta level jokes (HA HA the man is making a boring speech and all the characters are falling a sleep, no, that's not funny because the speech is still boring) and bizarre scenes where a family grieving the death of a child suddenly turns into clumsy slapstick.

Despite my gripeing though it was pretty good, they had the required clumsy political subtext and who doesn't love that? (Joe Dante, that's who doesn't ... er ... not love that) There's plenty of good monster eating people stuff, and there's some nice use of sound, you know, it all goes quiet and there's a low pass filter so it sounds like you've been deafened. (As usual the Curzon did their best to fuck that up by overdriving the speakers so they clipped when things exploded, seriously one time I went there and they played the wrong soundtrack for a film for about 10 minutes before they realised and started the whole film over again making me miss the last tube home. Also the twat at the ticket desk managed to ruin the end of the film before we even got in there by shouting to his mate at the cafe about what happens to the little girl at the end, come on, it's an easy job, sell tickets don't give away the end of the film. Hold on, where was I? Oh yeah I was summarising...) Ultimately, you're probably not going to be disapointed by this film unless you have unrealistically high expectations, though you will need a solid tolerance for scrappy plot logic and unnecessary sub plots to enjoy it as much as most critics seem to have.

IMDB