It seems to be very difficult in that region, where a monster comes out of the Han River in Seoul and focuses on attacking people. Things may seem wrong where the monster kidnaps a young girl and begins her whole family by locating the monster and bringing her little girl home on a mission that seems to be the most dangerous in that area.
Bravely shifting tones from the horrific to the slapstick and back again, Bong Joon-ho has made a movie that's comprised almost equally of family sitcom, political indictment, high-urban paranoia and maximum-geek, monster-movie delight.
Joon-ho Bong's The Host is a very different kettle of mutated fish.
Chicago Sun-Times
April 01, 2007
A horror thriller, a political satire, a dysfunctional family comedy, and a touching melodrama, Bong Joon-ho's The Host is also one helluva monster movie.
The film's limber and inventive director Joon-ho Bong keeps The Host creeping and leaping for its entire two hours, which are filled with incident after incident, alternately terrifying, ridiculous, suspenseful and wry.
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
August 10, 2010
A pleasant reminder of the pleasures in the low-budget quickly made monster B-film of the 1950s.
Miami Herald
March 23, 2007
Rarely plays out the way you expect. Director Bong is careful to deliver the promised scares, but he is also willing to overlook plot formulas to explore his own interests.
Detroit News
March 23, 2007
Maybe this is actually a treatise on the dissonance between East and West, science and nature, promise and tragedy. Nah. It's just a dumb, crappy horror movie that wants to be celebrated as such.
A livid bureaucratic satire, berserk creature feature and surprisingly somber drama, "The Host" is a convulsive, wild ride - simultaneously eliciting squirms and giggles by mashing up finger-pointing anger with "The Thing's" wiseass wickedness.
