The Host

Review in a Hurry:  Sometimes all it takes to bring a family together is mass hysteria and a mutated, human-swallowing fish monster. This blend of screwball comedy and creature feature is the highest-grossing South Korean film of all time, and it's easy to see why.

The Bigger Picture:  The dysfunctional Park family, who can barely manage to maintain their snack bar on the banks of the Han River, are ill prepared to deal with the rampaging, toothy, slimy truck-sized Weta-Workshop-designed tadpole that climbs out of the river one day. (To be fair, the government and the army don't fare too well either.)

When the daughter of buffoonish family scion Gang-Du is apparently eaten by the monster, the rest of the family is thrown into quarantine by paranoid authorities. But when they learn that young Hyun-Seo is still alive, they decide to break out and rescue her. The Park family aren't exactly trained for this kind of thing, despite having an Olympic-caliber archer and an irascible college revolutionary at their disposal, so the action that follows is about as close to tragedy as slapstick can get.

The Host mixes bittersweet humor and horrifying monster antics in a way that would be almost unimaginable for any modern American film. It's a mutant child of Jaws, Godzilla and any number of Steve Martin family comedies, addressed to no particular market or age group, and equally comfortable with poignantly human moments and a human-slurping monster. It's not perfect—there's a reel or two of excess plot, and the unfamiliar acting style can be off-putting, but it is both better and different than you'd expect, which is pretty good for a fish story.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  Too many subplots, most not handled especially well; if you wandered around the lobby for half of the second act, you wouldn't miss anything especially important or moving.