With a great anticipation of its first major release in the U.S., the Korean box-office hit, "The Host", had the first promotional screening in Washington, DC on March 6.
Sponsored by Magnolia pictures, DC Film Society, and the Asian Pacific American Film, Inc., the record breaking Korean monster flick has attracted numerous movie goers that filled the theater, located on E street.
Scheduled to officially open on selected theaters in the U.S. on March 9, the movie has already won many accolades from U.S. film critics.
"The Korean film "The Host" has such a wide range of attributes -- 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 -- that it's hard to recall that it's first and foremost a monster movie", an editorial review of the Washington Post writes.
The story of "The Host" is about a five-member family consisting of a "slob" who falls asleep at anytime, a disgruntled college-grad constantly complaining about his current unemployment, a professional archer plagued by her "tortoise-like" nature, a middle school girl (and the youngest member of the family) who paradoxically is the most mature one, and an old man who is the head of this dysfunctional family trying desperately to hold it together. The story starts at a laboratory of a U.S. military base in Seoul. Toxic chemical dumped into the Han River creates the monster. The storyline continues as the main hero, who helps his father to run a kiosk alongside Seoul's Han River, loses his daughter to the monster in a chaotic frenzy as the mutated "thing" suddenly appears and destroys the tranquility of the riverside.
The sheer brilliance of Director Bong leads the audience – through the prism of the hero's family – to laugh, to cry, and inevitably to spill popcorn all over one's companion from the ample amount of shock.
The New Yorker describes the movie, "it may seem perverse to hail "The Host" as a thing of a beauty, yet that is what it is: a perfect mixture of the silly and the grave".
The film's director, Bong Joon-ho, was in DC last week for a publicity tour – he has visited New York, Chicago, and San Francisco as a part of the tour.
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