#god what a good movie. i love you gwoemul

[univiresque]

i think that like… the host by bong joon ho should be required reading (watching) for dungeon meshi fans. not out of a disrespect for dunmeshi lovers bc it really is so so good i just think that if you liked dunmeshi the host is something with like similarly important themes of eating and being hungry and survival. i am not a guy who watches movies often so maybe this sounds a little hollow but like the host by bong joon ho is like. one of the best films ever maybe. unparalleled

[365days365movies]

May 4, 2021: The Host (2006) (Recap)

NO NOT THAT ONE

Stephanie Meyer goddamn sucks. I realize that I’m not exactly the first person to say that, but she’s terrible. Not only is she not a good writer, but she also has some very disparaging views about science fiction and its fans, which led her to make her own science fiction book and film. ANd yeah...it’s terrible! No surprise there.

So, no, not the 2013 critical and commercial flop known as The Host. No, this post is about 2006′s The Host, AKA Gwoemul, AKA 괴물. I haven’t ventured to far into the world of Korean cinema, and with this film, my repertoire includes only the films of director Bong Joon-Ho. And if that name sounds familiar...it should.

Bong Joon-ho DESERVEDLY made headlines last year when his film became the first non-English language film to win for Best Picture, and the first time Asian writers won for best screenplay! His Oscar speech in accepting best director is genuinely one of the best and most sincere speeches I’ve ever heard from a director, and I love the dude.

Oh, and if you’re wondering which film it was, then, like me, you also really need to watch Parasite. And because I’m terrified of spoilers, I’m not gonna look for GIFs of that movie. Instead, I’ll put in a GIF of one of my favorite sci-fi films, and the only other Bong Joon-ho film I’ve seen.

God, I love Snowpiercer. And if this is anything like that, I’m probably going to love this movie. Now, I don’t really know much about this film, other than the fact that it’s a monster film. And if there’s any science-fiction subgenre more iconic than monster films, I don’t know it. Well...OK, aliens, robots, and more, but monster films are still a big part of the genre. But where does that begin? Is it here?

Definitely an argument you can make, since Frankenstein’s Monster is a creation of science gone wrong, from the book to the movie. Fun fact, Mary Shelley based it on a real-world experiment by Italian physiologist Giovanni Aldini, who used a corpse to illustrate the connection between electricity and muscles. Neat, huh? So, yeah, that’s a solid launching point.

But that’s more of a horror story. What about something a little more monster-y? Well, from the UK to Japan we go!

OHHHHHH YEAH, THAT’S THE GOOD STUFF

Toho’s 1954 film Gojira is one of the most classic monster films ever made, and singlehandedly launched the kaiju genre in Japan. And it’s really well-known that it was made as a response to post-World War II tensions about nuclear warfare. Which, in Japan, is kind of understandable, no? But nothing demonstrated the destructive power of science more than that moment in history. 

So, Godzilla arrives. And the US also makes more monster movies, most of which take place in contemporary settings, making many of them lo-fi sci-fi. Now, some dipped into horror or fantasy, but the science fiction roots were there. Which eventually would bring us full circle to films where monsters were made and go loose. You know, like this:

It’s a franchise that defines the ‘90s, and lab-grown monster movies exploded around that time as well. At the same time, environmental concerns REALLY started to build by this point, and those concerns leaked profusely into film all over the world. And by the time we get to 2006...well, let’s get into it, huh?

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

In a mortuary, a U.S. military doctor (Scott Wilson) instructs his assistant (Brian Lee) to dump bottles of formaldehyde down the drain of the facility, which goes directly into the Han River. The assistant protests, but the doctor insists, despite the risk of polluting the river. AAAAAmericans.

In the river about two years later, two fisherman see something strange looking in the river. Then, four years later, in 2006, a suicidal man is about to jump into the river, when he sees something dark in the water below.

Later that year, we meet Park Hee-bong (Byun Hee-Bong) and his son Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), who run a food truck and snack bar near the river. Gang-du’s not exactly a hard worker, to his father’s chagrin. His daughter, Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung), is a student who comes home from school, where her drunken uncle Nam-il (Park Hae-il) comes to her chagrin. She and her father watch TV, where his sister Nam-joo (Bar Doona) can be seen competing in archery.

As he’s bringing food out to customers, he joins them in observing something strange and massive hanging off of the bridge. And at this point, I would be running the fuck away. Literally, the news just said that there was a body found with the legs missing, and these people are throing cans at it after it plunges into the water. One girl asks if it’s a dolphin. Mother...HAVE YOU SEEN A DOLPHIN BEFORE?

NOT THIS

Yeah, this thing just comes bounding along the shore, slapping people into the water with its tail, and batting aside others. Doesn’t look like its actively killing anybody yet, but it’s definitely hurting people at least. That is, until it goes into a trailer where a bunch of people have gathered, and appears to eat a bunch of them. So, yeah, dangerous.

Gang-du, to his infinite credit, actually attempts to confront and hurt the creature, with the help of Donald White (David Joseph Anselmo). And it works, but at the cost of the creature aggro-ing onto him. Back at the snack truck, his sister’s lost the title, much to the chagrin of Gang-du’s daughter and father. She goes outside in frustration, only to be thrown into the midst of the chaos with her dad. He grabs a girls hand in the chaos, only to find that it’s a different child entirely. And...unfortunately...

The creature grabs her with its tail, and leaps back into the river, disappearing. Fuck. Poor Hyun-seo, and poor Gang-du. Gang-du IMMEDIATELY goes to get her back, jumping into the river, but the creature takes her across to an island, out of reach. That night, an impromptu funeral is held for the victims, at which Hyun-seo is being honored as well. There, both Gang-du’s sister and brother also attend, and all four of the break down dramatically and publicly.

Nam-il blames his brother for letting her die, which is unfair, but understandable. The family eventually calms down and discusses the circumstances of Hyun-Seo’s birth and death, both of which were accidental. As they do, a man in a protective suit comes out, and asks who was at the river incident. Nam-il protests this, and asks what’s going on. The man doesn’t explain, and the room is instead gassed, as everyone is ushered towards the entrance.

In the process, Gang-du (stupidly) reveals that he was hit by some blood splatter. He’s immediately stuffed in a bag and kidnapped by the authorities. Meanwhile, the news reveals that the creature is carrying a virus, and anyone who has been in contact with it has been infected. Because of this, the entire family is taken to a quarantine hospital, which oddly has very few actual quarantine procedures in place. And additionally, Gang-du is feeling a bit itchy.

That night, in the hospital, Gang-du gets a call on his cell phone! It’s Hyun-seo! She’s alive! And she’s trapped, in a sewer somewhere near the river. Meanwhile, a group of men in protectve suits are outside patrolling the river. One man finds money on the side of the road, and goes to pick it up, only for the men to be attacked by the creature. But it’s then that we discover that the creature is not killing or eating people, but simply taking them own to its lair. Also in said lair is Hyun-seo, trapped and with a now dead phone.

The next day, the family tries to get an officer to look into the call, only for the officer to be, frankly, an absolute piece of shit to this grieving family. Gang-du tries to explain, and his explanation is ENTIRELY RATIONAL, but the officer and doctors are absolutely terrible about it.

Because nobody’s listening, the family manages to escape from the hospital in order to try and save Hyun-Seo, and they hop into a van, taking it and running. This is a good place to mention that, despite this being a monster movie, it's also...weirly funny sometimes. Like, that whole scene is pretty great. After bartering with a group of gangsters for supplies (and after Hee-bong basically gives away all of his credit cards), the group manages to get a map and a new car. But they pretty quickly get stopped at a checkpoint into the city, and are nearly caught, but manage to escape and get to the riverfront. Once there, they begin searching the sewers to find Hyun-seo. And I gotta say; this may be an extremely dysfunctional family, but they’re a devoted family all the same.

Of course, that eventually gives way to arguments within the sewer itself, but that’s interrupted by a noise heard somewhere around them. They fire at it, using weapons obtained from the gangster but conclude that it was nothing. What it actually is is two brothers, older Se-jin (Lee Jae-eung) and younger Se-joo (Lee Dong-ho), homeless kids who are foraging the sewers in the abandoned city. But, of course, they eventually run into the creature, which attacks them. Meanwhile, an asleep Hyun-Seo dreams of dinner with her family, only to be woken up by the arrival of the creature, who deposits the bodies of the two boys in the sewer with her. Se-joo has survived, but Se-jin hasn’t, sadly.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family is gathered at their snack bar for the night, and prepares to set out or the morning. The to younger siblings appear to not give a single shit about Gang-du, but Hee-bong attempts to set them straight, talking about how he blames himself for the way Gang-du is now. However, the two just fall asleep during his speech. Poor Hee-bong. Also, he can apparently identify Gang-du’s health condition based on his farts because they spend so much time together, it’s dumb, and funny.

Also, poor the rest of them, because Gang-du wakes up to see the creature just waiting outside, watching them. Hee-bong fires at it, but the creature attacks and knocks over the bar. However, Hee-bong manages to hit it directly in the head, knocking it off, but not killing it. The family goes out to finish the job, but it runs away before they can kill it. They run after it, and are almost completely out of bullets. Hee-bong volunteers to go after it himself, but in the process...

Hee-bong doesn’t make it. The creature kills him, and the commotion attracts the military to their location. Gang-du is again captured, while Nam-il and Nam-joo escape, only to later be separated regardless. Meanwhile, the virus kills Donald White, the sergeant from earlier, and it continues to spread across Korea. To kill the creature, the government plans to release a chemical into the river called Agent Yellow, which feels...controversial.

Nam-il meats a colleague, “Fat Guevara” (Yam Pil-sung), who is easily able to provide a location for Hyun-seo using the number, which the cop earlier insisted was nearly impossible to do. Plus, both the sergeant and Gang-du encountered the creature together, and he seems to be just fine. Which probably means that something very wrong is happening now. Even worse, though, is the fact that Guevara’s appeared to trap Nam-il, as a massive reward is sought for his arrest. A gang of people surround hi, with the plan to capture him, but he VERY cleverly escapes by causing an electrical short, and AFTER having found Hyun-seo’s location! Nice, man! He takes off, now knowing exactly where his niece is.

Nam-joo, meanwhile, is literally living inside of the snack bar, and she gets a text from Nam-il with her location. He tags out, and she tags in, running to the location where the call came from. But she immediately runs into the creature, which knocks her down and unconscious. She manages to call Gang-du, who is currently about to be sedated. Now knowing where his daughter is, he tries to escape, only to be tackled by the doctors. He tells them where she is, but they don’t appear to listen. More importantly, the anesthetic doesn’t appear to work, much to the confusion of the doctors. Something is verrrrrrrry wrong here.

An American doctor (Paul Lazar) comes, and asks what’s wrong, and he tells him exactly what’s wrong. However, despite his words SEEMING to be heard, they once again call him crazy and delusional, and decide to give him a lobotomy to isolate the virus once and for all, like FUCKING ASSHOLES. Turns out that the virus? Yeah, it doesn’t exist whatsoever! It doesn’t exist even a little bit! Which means that this entire thing is a wild goddamn goose chase for a virus that DOESN’T FUCKING EXIST!!!

And the best thing is that Gang-du, despite not actually knowing English, still understands the words “no virus”, and know he fucking knows! However, because he knows, they now have to give him a lobotomy. Fuck me, man. Panicking, he cries for them to stop, and cries for his daughter, who’s still alive in the sewer.

Speaking of, Hyun-seo and Se-joo are bonding in the sewer, as they work to make a rope from things they find there. But in the process, they’re attacked by the creature, who know is actively eating the bodies, and presumably other people. Whoof. They manage to escape, but barely.

Back with Gang-du, who’s just gone through the lobotomy, which...hasn’t worked at all. Holy SHIT. Not sure what the hel is UP with this dude, but that’s a question in and of itself. He escapes by taking a nurse hostage, threatening them with a syringe of his blood, full of a virus that doesn’t exist!

Nam-il wakes up at the same time, not accompanied by a homeless man (Yoon Je-moon), who agrees to take him to the bridge to find Hyun-seo. In the sewer, the two kids have survived, and the creature appears to be asleep. Like a GODDAMN BOSS, she runs up the creatures back, and jumps onto a rope that she had made, and that was hanging far out of her reach. Unfortunately...the creature catches her with its tail. Fuck. It sets her down, and...lets her go? But as soon as she runs, it attacks bother her and Se-joo.

Just then, Gang-du gets to the lair, and uses the rope to climb down. Below him is a pile of bones, and no kids to be seen. The creature goes by, and Hyun-seo’s hand is dangling out of its mouth. And once again by coincidence, that’s when Nam-joo wakes up and reunites with her brother. The creature runs to the waterfront, only to be greeted by...a crowd? They’re gathered there to protest the release of the dangerous chemical into the river.

It all collides at once. The creature swims towards the crowd, Gang-du runs towards the creature, Agent Yellow is released over them both, causing the creature to faint. Gan-du runs up and grabs the bodies of his daughter and See-joo from its mouth, apparently too fucking late. Shit, man. This would’ve been avoided if they just HELPED him. Fuck. He carries her body away as more chemical is released onto the flailing creature, and the chemical causes everyone else in the area to violently hemorrhage as well. Meanwhile, Nam-il and Nam-joo arrive to see their deceased niece, grieving all over again. It’s...fuck, man, it sucks.

And Gang-du is fucking PISSED NOW. He grabs a street sign and attacks the injured creature, fueled by pure rage. Nam-il joins in with Molotov cocktails as it runs away. The homeless man douses it with gasoline, and that makes it easier for Nam-il to set it on fire...until he drops the bottle. And then, Nam-joo uses it to light an arrow on fire, hitting the creature with it, and setting it ablaze. It runs to the water, only for Gang-du to stab it through the head with the street sign, finally killing it in revenge for his father and his daughter. Fucking bad-ASS. And also quite tragic, given the circumstances.

And despite the tragedy, there is one happy circumstance: Se-joo lives! In fact, Hyun-seo died saving his life, like the real goddamn hero of this story that she is. Fuck. That’s terrible, but I’m happy that her sacrifice wasn’t in vain. From here, we fast-forward to the winter, where a clean-shaven and well-kept Gang-du is is now caring for Se-joo. The news is on in the background, but the two ignore it, happily eating together after the ordeal they’ve been through.

Whoof. That’s The Host, or Gwoemul! And yeah, that’s one hell of a movie, I tell you what. For a monster movie, it’s quite dramatic, and they don’t try to humanize the monster AT ALL. And honestly, I really like it! A Pyrrhic victory at the end, but nothing wrong with that! I’ll elaorate a bit in the review! See you there!

[majingojira]

120 Years, 120 Monsters, Days 27, 28, and 29

This one is going to be a doozy! 

101) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) - Orcs/Uruk-Hai

One of J.R.R. Tolkien's original creations for his Mythopoeia were the Orcs, and their spawn the Uruk-Hai.  They’re the template example of the ‘evil minion’ that can be slaughtered in droves yet still poses a danger if only from their numbers.  

Crude, vile, filthy, disgusting, rough, and cannibalistic, the Orcs were made to be as repulsive as possible, and that made them memorable.

102) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) - Nazgul/Ringwraiths

Eh, might as well complete the trilogy.  With only one monster left to claim as its own, but still so many to choose from, it was a hard choice to make.  I decided to go with the one that has their own memorable musical motif.  

The Nazgul are an inspiration for every kind of “Undead” in gaming fiction.  Men who were granted immortality thanks to their magic rings, but their bodies did not last with them.  So now they are wraiths that animate armor and clothes in order to affect the world of the living.  Capable of dark sorcery, a shriek that drives men to madness, weapons capable of making more like themselves, and being unkillable save a few specific methods.  Drawing from old folklore and myth, it became a standard for generations to come.

And with their horses gone, they upgrade their mounts to Fell Beasts for the movie -- winged horrors that allow them to take down armies almost by themselves.  Since they are the inspiration for so many RPG horrors, I think the best way to describe how terrifyingly powerful and dangerous the Ringwraiths are is with an RPG term.

“HAX!  I CALL HAX!”

103) Freddy vs. Jason (2003)     - Jason Voorhees

Jason had to be on the list, but let’s be honest with ourselves: they were pretty crap for the most part. Often incoherent, relying more on spectacle than story, they’re good schlock at best, but some are also quite painful.  And he didn’t become a true monster until later in the series.  Before that, he was a human killer, and before that the killer was his mom and the best scare of the movie came from a damn dream sequence.  

Which is probably why, in the end, I went with the one where he fights the incarnation of nightmares for the film to include him in.  This was a labor of love, and that love shows through the film.  As you might have guessed, I’m not a fan of the Friday the 13th movie series. The love this movie shows that series makes me want to give them another chance (or a chance in some cases).  

As to Jason himself, he is in pretty good form. Archetypal “Slasher” or “Relentless Undead”. Driven to kill in part for revenge, in part mad obsession against perceived impropriety, and in part because his mommy told him.  It makes him more . . . sympathetic.  He’s still a remorseless killer, and nearly unstoppable juggernaut, but he’s the lesser of two evils here.

But that bar is REALLY low.

104) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - Dementors

Harry Potter had a lot of creatures in it, some from folklore, others were unique.  But only one really, truly resonated.  Those were the Dementors.  According to the writer, they were her expression of depression.  What it did to her is what the dementors do to others.  It’s quite succinct, but that’s what they are.  It’s a YA series, they can be deep, but sometimes the meaning is spelled out clearly.  

Their design, faceless, shadowy wraiths, works well to support them as incarnations of depression.  Plus the mouth the movie’s give them is just damn creepy.

105) Call of Cthulhu (2005) - Cthulhu

H.P. Lovecraft’s works have had a long and powerful influence on monsters, but his work has rarely been translated to film, and even rarer has it been done well.  One of those exceptions goes to a group of dedicated fans of Lovecraft: The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society who made an adaptation of one of his most famous works . . . as a silent film.  They made it as though it were adapted around the time it was printed.  

This choice allows for low budget and simple effects to carry the day.  It turns R’lyeh into full expressionist germanic horror. Including some practical effects taking advantage of visual illusions (creating a concave structure that looks convex, etc).  

Lovecraft’s stories are generally about the buildup, and the film works well in that regard.  It convinces the audience of the insignificance of man in the setting, and the reach and power of the sleeping god-monster.  Once Cthulhu shows up, there’s no real dialogue for that sequence. The actions are all primal and universal, with R’lyeh as much a danger as Cthulhu himself at times.  

There is one change: Cthulhu doesn’t ignore the poor humans.  It considers them.  Little more than pests, but it still considers them.  

And he’s a GREAT stop-motion effect, and even once shown, he is kept in shadow and shown only in part, adding to the menace he emanates.

106) The Host (2006) - Gwoemul

The Host is an odd film.  One part comedy, one part tragedy, one part absurdity, one part social commentary.  In the end, it works, but it’s an odd journey to get there.  

The creature itself is a mutation, and one of the best looking mutations I’ve seen.  It’s so mutated that it’s hard to identify exactly what it is, or what it was to start with.  Most mutants in fiction are just organism A + Extra stuff.  This thing is . . . well, aside from being horrendously ugly and amphibious it’s hard to say what it is, exactly.  And that works well in its favor.

The creature also moves around and acts as though it were in constant pain, which is another nice touch.  It is still a villainous beast at the end of the day, but the constant pain it feels and its need to feed make its actions understandable.  

107) The Mist (2007) - The Leviathan

The Mist has a great, simple premise.  “A fog rolls into town and a person with blood on their shirt comes running out, screaming ‘There’s something in the mist!’”

It’s so simple, it’s brilliant.  What is in the mist?  An entire alien ecosystem, foreign enough to be hard to kill, but close enough to eat us without suffering.  Of these, one monster stands above all the others (literally).  A creature as massive as a whale that has other horrors following in its wake.  After all the monsters and killer creatures (and madness driven humans), it shows up and easily demonstrates how insignificant humans are in this strange world order that peaked into our world.  It doesn’t interact with the survivors, it just passes by as the things which they thought were the deadliest things in the mist fly around it to pick up its scraps.  No more than oxpeckers to the horror.

It says so much with so little screentime.

Also, the ending of this movie messed me up in all the best ways.  

108) Cloverfield (2008) - Clover

This was America’s giant monster answer to 9-11 as Godzilla was to Japan after Hiroshima.  It didn’t quite work out as well, but it was still a good monster and good film.

I think part of the reason why Godzilla worked, and Clover did not has to do with symbolic resonance.  He manages to capture the fear, confusion, and similar fears brought up by the incident, but doesn’t go to the same lengths and depths of understanding of the situation (because, frankly, almost no one understood them yet at the time, at least not fully, as it was the result of almost 100 years of turmoil that can date itself back to the FIRST World War).  

The creature is just as confused as everyone else in the movie, which is a stark contrast to all that possible allegorical connection.  Still, it set one thing up: Large American monsters would have a bent-legged stance from here on out.  

109) Trollhunter (2010) - Trolls

A variety of perspectives and stories is always helpful.  It’s as true in life, as it is in film.  This is partly why I tried to include a few of the foreign film monsters that I have seen (that are worth it, I’ve seen some that were derivative as hell without adding much worthwhile).  So I was quite pleased to include Trollhunter on this list.

It walks a fine line between horror and comedy, which I always appreciate. It also treats the Trolls as sources of horror as well as treating them as big, dumb, dangerous animals.  All the strangeness of them is explained decently (they’re so dumb because of what they eat for the most part -- a mix of meat and rock, they turn to “Stone” because of a runaway chain reaction of calcium buildup due to an inability to process vitamin E or some such technobabble), save one detail from the folklore.

They can still smell the blood of a Christian man.  

The Found Footage style makes sense here and works well with it, and leads to some interesting humor beyond the usual “Camera Damage’.  We get humor ranging from surprise reveals to the mundanity of what really should be an awesome sounding job (To meme: Paperwork? For my troll hunter? It’s more likely than you might expect!).  The FX are convincing but what really sells it is the title character and his interactions with the creatures.  They’re just animals, big and dumb, and he has to clean up after them.  And his job is as terrible as you might expect.  It’s one part character study, one part journey into a hidden world.  And I’m a sucker for that sort of mix.  

110) How to Train your Dragon (2010) - Dragons

The Dragon in folklore, myth, and religion is one of the most diverse creatures within those fields.  Beyond even the vampire, which at times usually means “Usually nocturnal thing that attacks people in a debilitating/draining way rather than outright killing them”.  Very few movies go into the sheer variety the dragon can encompass.  They usually focus on one individual dragon or one species of dragon.  Before this series of books was turned into a movie and TV franchise of epic proportions, the only thing that even came close to doing that was the Rankin-Bass animated feature Flight of Dragons.  Which showed two main varieties of Dragon (Eastern and Western).  

The advent of cheaper CG allowed for a whole slew of dragon shapes and sizes to be used and while they didn’t go as nuts as some of the folklore went, they made a really good effort.  And one that I think should be rewarded.  

While the ones in the film have a similar general behavior (in the way that big cats have similar behavior), the visual variety made them a treat to all see on the screen at once.