Eff this. These 24 days of bullshit is bullshit.
At least that’s what I feel like saying. When I comitted myself to this project, I kind forgot that some days I don’t even see my home, nevermind my computer, so yeah. But I shall forge on! Today, reviewing a movie of my choosing. And my choice is a great new-ish monster movie titled “The Host”.
When talking to people, I often described “The Host” as a small-scale “Cloverfield”. Thinking about it now, I don’t think I could really be more wrong. The only thing the two movies have in common is the moster element and the fact that the basic plot is one person looking for a loved one. Other than that, not really the same at all. Even a little.
The plot to this movie, as it were, revolves around a man and his daughter. Also his other immediate family (siblings and father), but they’re just support characters. They’re living a pretty standard (if a little poor) life when one day a monster emerges from the nearby river and starts eating the shit out of people. It spies Main Character’s Daughter, and goes after her. Main Character witnesses his daughter devoured whole and vows to go after the creature. The twist is that the moster does not actually eat the girl, but rather brings her back to its hidey-hole for later snacking. And the story more or less just has the guy hunting the beast, and the girl fighting to stay alive.
The thing to note here is that this movie is originally Korean (I’m pretty sure). From this fact, we can extrapolate that the voices we hear speaking are not the actual voices of the characters. On this note, I would like to mention that the dubbing is very, very bad. Hilarious bad at times. The kind of bad that sort of makes the movie more enjoyable. Once scene that has all the family mouning the loss of Main Character’s Daughter in particular is so ridiculous that I could not keep my composure and broke out laughing. Only after the fact did I truly pity how bad it really was.
Sketchy dubbing aside, I agree with the media blurbs on the cover, and think that “The Host” is a wicked awesome monster movie. Or at least as wicked awesome as a modern monster flick can be. The creature itself is way way cooler than the “Cloverfield” beast by all stretches of the imagination (the lack of massive hype helped), even though it’s many times smaller. It’s fast, ferocious, and pretty much all-out cool. It’s kind of like a big, pissed-off fish with a taste for blood. And it shows up on screen a lot! Unlike the Mr. I-Want-To-Remain-Mysterious “Cloverfield” monster. Sadly, there aren’t a lot of quality screencaps of the thing, but here’s a decent one.
