Gwoemul (The Host) (2006)
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Reviews Counted: 148
Fresh: 137 | Rotten: 11
As populace pleasing as it is intellectually satisfying, The Host combines scares, laughs, and satire into a riveting, monster movie.
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 43
Fresh: 41 | Rotten: 2
As populace pleasing as it is intellectually satisfying, The Host combines scares, laughs, and satire into a riveting, monster movie.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 173,723
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Movie Info
When a young girl is snatched away from her father by a horrifying giant monster that emerges from the River Han to wreak havoc on Seoul, her entire family sets out to locate the beast and bring their little girl back home to safety in South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's big-budget creature feature. Hee-bong is a man of modest means who runs a snack bar on the banks of the River Han. Along with his slow-witted eldest son, Gang-du; Gang-du's young daughter, Hyun-seo; archery champion daughter
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Gwoemul (The Host) Trailer & Photos
All Critics (152) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (146) | Rotten (12) | DVD (33)
As ebullient and bizarre as a monster that can do back flips, leaving the viewer in a shock of delight.
Top CriticA horror thriller, a political satire, a dysfunctional family comedy, and a touching melodrama, Bong Joon-ho's The Host is also one helluva monster movie.
Bravely shifting tones from the horrific to the slapstick and back again, Bong Joon-ho has made a movie that's comprised almost equally of family sitcom, political indictment, high-urban paranoia and maximum-geek, monster-movie delight.
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.
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.
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.
Joon-ho Bong's The Host is a very different kettle of mutated fish.
A livid bureaucratic satire, berserk creature feature and surprisingly somber drama, "The Host" is a convulsive, wild ride - simultaneously eliciting squirms and giggles by mashing up finger-pointing anger with "The Thing's" wiseass wickedness.
A pleasant reminder of the pleasures in the low-budget quickly made monster B-film of the 1950s.
A subversive blast
South Korean creature feature is wild and witty.
This monster movie from the Republic of Korea is one of the best films of its kind.
Minor flaws in a film destined to be embraced by genre fans worldwide.
A fantastic satire/monster movie
Imagine Little Miss Sunshine and Alien mixed together and you'll have an inkling of what South Korea's The Host has in store for you.
Ako se zanemari politi%u010Dka pozadina, "Doma%u0107in" funkcionira kao vrlo dobar akcijski horor.
A rather tender-hearted, often sorrowful, more often hilarious view on the familial conflicts between generations and between siblings.
Joon-ho Bong effectue un pied de nez pour le moins renversant à une formule attribuant ordinairement une force psychologique surhumaine à ses protagonistes
Think Godzilla, but with better special effects and better all-around filmmaking
Audience Reviews for Gwoemul (The Host)
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Super Reviewer
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- Gang-du: You mean there's no virus? Right? There's no virus!
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Latest News on Gwoemul (The Host)
January 18, 2012:
Tilda Swinton in Talks to Join Chris Evans in Snow PiercerJamie Bell is also in the mix for Joon-ho Bong's upcoming English-language debut.
February 28, 2011:
Who Should Host Next Year's Oscars?With this year's Oscars on the books, EW asks the sensible question: Who should host the next...
September 2, 2009:
First Look: The Host 2Eager for an early glimpse of one of the monsters you'll see in "The Host 2"? Twitch has what you're...
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Foreign Titles
- The Host (DE)
- The Host (UK)
