Have any of you heard it? The heartbreak of a parent who's lost a child?
The Host was South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's third feature film, but it was the first to have a real impact in the States. This probably has a lot to do with its monster movie trappings (which have always had a way of making foreign films go down easier), but when you get right down to it, it's just a damned good movie, period. Co-written and directed by Bong, the 2006 film is about a giant, mutated amphibian creature that is created when an American military official callously dumps toxic chemicals into the Han River, where the Park family has a food stand. Patriarch Byeon Hee-bong runs the stand with his imbecilic son Song Kang-ho and both dote on Song's daughter (Ko Ah-seong), so when a monster rears its ugly head one day and carries her off (along with a number of other unfortunate souls), they're understandably beside themselves.
They don't have much time to dwell on their loss, though, before they're swept up in the government's response to the disaster, which is predicated on the notion that the creature is carrying a deadly virus and anyone who had contact with it is a threat to themselves and others. Those others include Song's siblings, an unemployed college graduate (Bae Doona) and a champion archer (Park Hae-il), but when Song receives a frantic cell phone call from Ko, who is miraculously still alive and trapped in a sewer by the monster, the family springs into action. First, though, they have to break quarantine and somehow save her before the U.S. military (which has stepped in to help contain both the outbreak and the creature) can unleash a toxic substance called Agent Yellow (which was evidently named by somebody with a short memory). Bong has said his film isn't strictly anti-American (it's nothing on the order of the infamous Turkish film Valley of the Wolves Iraq, for example), but the fact remains we don't come off too well in it.