Gwoemul 2006

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: 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. Read more

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: Barely five minutes into The Host, it's already clear that a classic movie monster has been superbly unleashed. Its introductory rampage on the banks of the Han River instantly qualifies as one of the best monster attack scenes ever. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Throws a lively party with a little of everything: scares, laughs, politics and a bit of archery. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: The Host begins with a dry, frequently absurd comic sensibility, but steadily grows darker, more intense and truly thrilling. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: This is a portrait of a country's deepest anxieties, which just happen to be distilled into a mandibled squidlike reptile. It has the tang of social realism. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The mix of dark humor, creeping suspense, and a sort of apocalyptic tenderness makes this the best horror flick in years. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: A thrilling ride and a sometimes dry, sometimes sweet comedy, but beneath all that is a humane and tragic view of life worthy of the greatest films. Even those without rubber monsters. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: A great piece of filmmaking and a legitimate science-fiction/horror classic. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The Host is first and foremost an ecstatic monster movie, as terrifying as it is funny. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Bong still offers a powerful rejoinder to his Hollywood counterparts: Anything you can do, I can do better. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: It's Godzilla with a severe case of Murphy's Law, and it is never less than bizarrely delightful. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: A film that will catch you leaning in one direction and abruptly pull you in another, all the while building to a surprisingly emotional climax. Read more

Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle: Monster movies tend to be as misunderstood as their creatures, but dating back to 1931's Frankenstein, some haven't been about scaring us so much as enlightening us. The Host does this while disgorging a lizardlike carnivore. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: A cross between Godzilla and Jaws, it manages to be both truly scary and truly funny -- sometimes all at once. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: The Host is at best a well-made entertainment mixing drama with humor, with enough populist touches to endear itself to audiences. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: 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. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: [This] wildly entertaining saga should become the hip, thinking-person's monster movie of choice. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: 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. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: [Director Bong Joon-ho] brings to his subject a humanistic affection and expansive knowledge of the real world rarely found among filmmakers who single-mindedly nourished their childhood imaginations on things from black lagoons. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Like Wes Craven, [director] Bong recognizes the possibilities for artistic and editorial expression that lie in the fertile ground of the thriller/horror/slasher genre. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: A perfect mixture of the silly and the grave. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The first good horror movie of the year. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Bong Joon-ho's cheerfully outrageous monster movie is set to attain instant cult status. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: The Host is a horror movie with a difference. South Korea's biggest box-office hit ever, the thriller -- by director-writer Bong Joon-ho -- is a fantastical genre-buster. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The problem with the film is that the sum isn't greater than the parts and the pieces don't fuse in a way that's consistently pleasing or cinematically satisfying. Read more

Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: A 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. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: The movie pops up out of nowhere, grabs you in its big, messy tentacles, and drags you down into murky depths, where social satire coexists with slapstick, and B-movie cliches mutate into complex metaphors. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: As ebullient and bizarre as a monster that can do back flips, leaving the viewer in a shock of delight. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: 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. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: If this madly entertaining movie has a fault, it's that it's too ingenious for the genre it ostensibly inhabits. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: The thinking person's giant mutant tadpole pic, and just how many of those have you seen lately? Read more

Mark Holcomb, Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: What a pleasure to watch an ambitious horror film that not only frightens but also surprises and engages us completely with its artful shifting of tones. Read more

Derek Elley, Variety: Pic, which is not even in widescreen, will be best appreciated by auds who just go with the quirky flow rather than expect regulated, U.S.-style thrills. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The Host, Bong Joon-ho's giddy creature feature, has an anarchic mess factor worthy of a pile of old Mad magazines. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: It's a comedy, it's a vivid evocation of a dysfunctional family that comes together in crisis, it's a wondrous homage to the courage of children, it's a biting critique of the government. Read more