Open Classroom: The Host

More than a decade before his Best Picture-winning smash Parasite, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho made another film about a hard-luck family living on the margins of contemporary Seoul: The Host. When an amphibious monster emerges from the Han River and snatches young Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung), her father Gang-du (Parasite's Song Kang-ho) and relatives mount a dangerous rescue mission, heedless of official warnings that the monster also “hosts” a deadly virus. 

A hit with South Korean and international audiences upon its release, The Host has since become a key film in the burgeoning field of effects studies. As the scholar Julie Turnock argues, the computer-generated creature, spawned from chemicals recklessly spilled by the U.S. military, both embodies a critique of American power and conforms to expectations set by big-budget, effects-driven American blockbusters. As it rises from murky waters, The Host's river monster also dredges up complex questions about the limits and possibilities of local forms in a globalized media culture. (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2006, 120 min., 35mm) 

Presented by Media Arts and Design and Film Studies Center

Cooper Long, Ph.D., is a Teaching Fellow in the Humanities, Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College, University of Chicago. His research and teaching focuses on the relations between film and other media, with an emphasis on questions of aesthetics, industry, and technology.