The Host is not about politics or pollution, but an evocative and often rollicking throwback.
Comment
03/23/07
The Host (2007)
92
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:141
Fresh:130
Rotten:11
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: As populace pleasing as it is intellectually satisfying, The Host combines scares, laughs, and satire into a riveting, monster movie.
Runtime: 1 hr 59 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
US Box Office: $2,010,000
Synopsis: The talk of the 2006 Cannes International Film Festival, THE HOST, the latest film from critically acclaimed visionary director BONG Joon-ho, has already garnered a substantial amount of... [More]
Starring: Kang-ho Song, Byun Hee-bong, Bae Hae-il, Bae Doo-na
Director: Oh Bong-Joon
Reviews for The Host
41 - 60 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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.
03/23/07
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.
03/23/07
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.
03/23/07
Slightly subversive but entertaining, The Host is a South Korean creature-feature import that'll get the Godzilla juices flowing again.
03/23/07
Sort of scary? Maybe. Gleefully humorous with a wink toward the tradition of bad monster movies? Not enough.
03/22/07
A monster movie for those who like a little meat on the genre's bones.
03/22/07
The Host is many things, some of them icky. Above all, though, it is the story of how these slapstick figures rise painfully to the level of competence, and beyond.
03/18/07
Our quirky family of ordinary heroes is on the march, fighting bad guys and bad monsters. And so the movie begins. Have fun.
03/17/07
Barely five minutes into The Host, it's already clear that a classic movie monster has been superbly unleashed. Its introductory rampage on the banks of the Han River instantly qualifies as one of the best monster attack scenes ever.
03/16/07
Individual stories bog down the film's pace, but The Host recovers quickly to redefine horror for the new millennium. This you have to see.
03/16/07
The movie pops up out of nowhere, grabs you in its big, messy tentacles, and drags you down into murky depths, where social satire coexists with slapstick, and B-movie clichés mutate into complex metaphors.
03/15/07
Can 93% of American movie critics be wrong? On the soft and squishy Rotten Tomatoes website, an amazing 70 out of 75 critics gave a thumbs up to The Host, a hokey South Korean monster movie that makes Godzilla look like The Godfather.
03/15/07
'The Host': A sneaky, spellbinding celebration of what movies are supposed to be all about.
03/14/07
Slapstick and Godzilla-inspired histrionics go (skillfully) hand-in-hand in this hugely entertaining creature feature from South Korea.
03/14/07
I always love it when I'm pleasantly surprised by a film I was not excited to see --- 'The Host' is a highly entertaining testament to the genre of 'monster movies'.
03/13/07
Without a lot of chills, and not much in the way of humor, I wouldn't say rush out to see this.
03/13/07
Boon shows that he has the film grammar of a Spielberg in how well he conveys his story cinematically... Boon will go places that Spielberg won't though.
03/12/07
It’s unlike just about any other monster movie I’ve ever seen.
03/12/07
Top CriticA perfect mixture of the silly and the grave.
03/12/07
Top CriticLatest News for The Host
September 02, 2009:
First Look: The Host 2 
Eager for an early glimpse of one of the monsters you'll see in "The Host 2"? Twitch has what you're looking for. More...
March 18, 2009:
Bong Joon-ho Discusses Upcoming Projects
Director Bong Joon-ho isn't involved with the upcoming sequel to his hit monster movie "The Host," but he does have a number of other projects in the pipeline -- including "an... More...
November 19, 2008:
The Host Is Coming to America
According to Bong Joon-ho, director of "The Host," Universal has purchased the American rights to his film, and the studio is planning a remake for U.S. audiences. More...
June 26, 2008:
The Host 2 Filming in Early '09
Director Ning Hao will helm and script a Chinese sequel to the Korean box-office smash The Host, scheduled to film early next year. More...
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