The Host

Not long ago, at a military base in Seoul, a smarmy American Army doctor ordered his young Korean assistant to pour dangerous chemicals down the drain. Now an enormous, horrifically mutated tadpole lurks in the Han River, and it is hungry. When a kindhearted dimwit (Song Kang-ho) sees his cute young daughter (Ko A-sung) snatched away by the beast, he must rally his otherwise dysfunctional family to attempt a rescue. With a dash of tempered B-movie indulgence, filmmaker Bong Joon-ho satirizes both Korean bureaucratic ineptitude and blunt American arrogance, while also perchance revitalizing the monster movie. The creature’s genetically confused menace is well played, at once nimble and lumbering. Come to think of it, the movie’s tone is like that, too, but not always well played, and even occasionally a little boring. On the whole, though, The Host remains charming and recommendable.