| abstract | - No connection to the book of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. The Host (Gwoemul, as it's known in its home country) is a critically-acclaimed 2006 film by Bong Joon-ho, combining aspects of the Kaiju movie, the political satire, and the family dramedy. It absolutely swept the Blue Dragon Awards and the 1st Asian Film Awards. It's also one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite movies of recent times. After an American military pathologist stationed in Korea dumps over 100 bottles of formaldehyde down the drain (this part really happened and was a big scandal in the newspapers, although a company dumping MILLIONS of liters into the same river went largely unnoticed as it was done by a local company and not the Americans), a mutated, twenty-foot tadpole creature shows up on a beach and eats a bunch of people before disappearing (this part didn't really happen). The main character, Park Gang-Du, is the father of one of the people who was eaten, a thirteen year-old girl named Hyun-seo. He's also more than a bit of a screw-up, and not a very good father, though extremely loving. After her funeral, at which he and his father, Hee-bong, are reunited with political activist brother Nam-il and Olympic bronze medalist archer sister Nam-joo, everyone who was present at the attack is required to go to the hospital; the Korean government, under pressure from the Americans, speculate that the creature may be carrying some hideous new disease, and they want to make sure it's contained. On his first night in the hospital, however, Gang-du's cellphone starts ringing: it's Hyun-seo, who is not dead. The creature regurgitated her out into a hole in the sewer, where it appears to be saving her for later. After the authorities don't believe him, Gang-du and his entire family break out of the hospital to find Hyun-seo. After it comes out, though, that Gang-du had some of the creature's blood splashed on him in the beach incident, he becomes Public Enemy #1, with the monster itself relegated to #2. If there's any kind of disease going around, then he's got it.
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