The Host

So apparently the monster movie is not a lost art. The Host is a new film out of Hong Kong (brought to America by billionaire/Dallas Maverics owner Mark Cuban) that breaks mmany traditional monster movie taboos. The monster was created with a little help from Weta Digital (the fellas that did the Lord of the Rings movies) and is one of the most original monsters I've seen on screen. Basic premise... asshole America dump chemicals and the like into the Han river and create a mutated beast. Unlike most movies featuring a monster this one is out in the open doing acrobatics through the whole movie. Within the first 15 minutes the carnage begins.

The main characters are a family of misfits, a forest gump like fool, his wise grisly father, award winning archer sister, drunk revolutionary unemployed brother and his bright daughter. There is some serious overacting but it's intended to be funny (I think) so if you start laughing when everyone is crying, don't worry it is funny. Tremors is the closest thing to this movie I can think of, but it's definitely not as straight forward comedic as that (maybe some of it's lost in cultural translation). There is also some obvious anti-American themes in the movie, so if you can't deal with the fact that much of the world hates it when our troops set up shop, don't bother with this one. If you haven't figured it out, by the time the extremely lazy eyed idiot scientist is on the screen you will have no choice but to accept the film makers do not like the American government at the least.

My only real complaint with the movie is the the lack of some editing, some scenes drag on, and the movie could have used a little pacing. Probably could have had 15 minutes or so cut, but all in all more than worth the 11.50 NYC movie prices.