Rumas Recommends: The Host

Opening in the US on March 9th, The Host (Korean title: Monster) is the story of a Korean family’s battle with a ferocious monster in Seoul’s Han River. It’s a hard film to categorize into any one genre — too tender to be called horror, too frantic to be called drama, too socially important to be called action.

Bong Joon-ho, the film’s director, is without a doubt the coolest and most down to earth big-name filmmaker in Korea today, and his previous two pictures, Barking Dogs Never Bite and Memories of Murder, were both fantastic. He’s a breath of fresh air amongst the pretentious and showy directors of his generation (read: Park Chan-wook), and he seems determined to tackle something entirely new with each project. He reminds me of Chris Nolan in that, despite being a popular young director, his movies bear no resemblence to the kind of MTV cinema that marks so many of his contemporaries’ work.

I also happen to have a couple personal connections to the film that further solidify its coolness: Bae Doo-na (above w/ bow), the female lead, and Ha Kwang-min, the film’s lead conceptual artist and storyboarder, are both personal friends with whom I go way back, and I can sing their praises until I’m blue in the face. I’ll spare you that for now, though. In a nutshell, The Host is a great example of Korean cinema done right. Don’t miss it.

Trailer at Quicktime