On DVD: The Host

A Korean horror film of sorts, The Host is a strange blend of action, comedy, and horror. It's supposedly being remade by a U.S. studio, so I'm sure they'll change the ending from a somewhat un-Hollywood one to a very Hollywood one. [Spoiler Alert] After all, children can't die in Hollywood action movies, right? [End Spoiler Alert]

It's the tale of what happens to a dysfunctional, motherless family when the youngest member of the family gets dragged in to the river by a monster mutated from all the toxic waste dumped in to the river. It's a cautionary tale of environmental disaster played out on a single family, of course, but it's also about the ineptitude of the government to deal with such an environmental horror, and how often we treat toxicity with more toxicity.

The movie's unintentionally funny sometimes, but that's less a function of poor production values than a cultural difference between narrative styles in Eastern films and those found here in the States. There's a bizarre, carnivalesque atmosphere to the film at times — certainly in the music — and logic seems to go out the window when it's narratively convenient (not that that's unheard of in US-made films), but clearly, there's a different set of cultural expectations being played in the movie, which makes for interesting watching. The overall narrative isn't half-bad either, and there's one seriously gross moment amidst all the not-so-successful attempts at horror.

Again, it'll be interesting to see how the US studio system, appropriately enough, mutates and turns the movie even more toxic. Michael Bay is probably attached to direct.