Get Your Reps In: “The Host” Is Still a Whole New Kind of “Something in the Water”

What to see at Portland’s repertory theaters.

Scene from Bong Joon-ho's "The Host" (IMDB)
By Chance Solem-Pfeifer

The Host (2006)

“There’s something in the water” takes on manifold meaning in Bong Joon-ho’s neo-classic monster movie The Host.

The 2006 movie that introduced many Western audiences to the Parasite director’s razor-sharp genre filmmaking centers on a mutant fish, malformed and swollen to enormous proportions by formaldehyde pollution in Seoul’s Han River.

In that sense, Bong plays the monster’s origin very literally…right up until he starts masterfully modulating tones.

Amid the monster mayhem, a raw-nerved family saga emerges (led by South Korean acting icon Song Kang-ho), which escalates into utter hysterics when the youngest member of the Park family (Go Ah-sung) disappears into the monster’s lair.

Meanwhile, every time the Park family interfaces with the government, it’s a wild satire about Iraq War-era U.S. foreign policy, disaster movie tropes, and South Korea’s education crisis. And when we focus on the monster, often seen swinging like an amphibious gymnast from bridge scaffolding or running scared through the Seoul sewer, we witness a manifestation of how metropolises perversely end up despising their public waterways—the last refuge of a city’s betrayals. Clinton Street Theater, Aug. 14.

ALSO PLAYING:

5th Avenue: A Summer’s Tale (1996), Aug. 9–11. Academy: Interview with the Vampire (1994), Aug. 9–15. Do the Right Thing (1989), Aug. 9–15. Badlands (1973), Aug. 9–15. Cinema 21: Seven Samurai (1954), Aug. 8. Rio Bravo (1959), Aug. 10. Cinemagic: Lethal Weapon (1987), Aug. 9, 10, and 15. Jennifer’s Body (2009), Aug. 9, 10, and 15. A Clockwork Orange (1971), Aug. 10, 11 and 13. The Man Called Noon (1973), Aug. 11 and 12. Peacock King (1988), Aug. 12 and 14. Con Air (1997), Aug. 13 and 14. Clinton: Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Aug. 8. Polyester (1981), Aug. 9. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Aug. 10. Jaws (1975), Aug. 11. The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), Aug. 13. Hollywood: Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Aug. 8. A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Aug. 9. Mystic Pizza (1988), Aug. 11. Five Fingers of Death (1972), Aug. 13. Tomorrow: Bottoms (2023), Aug. 9. Run Lola Run (1998), Aug. 11.

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