7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 12: The Host

The land of moose, polar bears and Eskimos is also the current home of 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem! It's day 12 of 28 and we're moving on to the Korean monster movie, The Host.

The setting is the Han River. It's kind of where everyone goes in the summertime. They fish, maybe they swim, but at the very least, they hang out. Park Gang-Du is a bit of...well, he's a little slow. He works at a small shop that his dad owns. And, his dad lets him kind of do whatever. If Gang-Du sleeps at work, then he sleeps at work and his dad just works around him.

Gang-du is a father himself. He has a 13 year old daughter named Hyun-seo. He also has a sister named Nam-joo and she's an olympic archer or something. She is an archer. And she's in televised competitions. So, Gang-du and Hyun-seo sit down to watch Nam-joo on tv. But, before it starts Hie-bong, Gang-du and Nam-joo's father, comes in and sends Gan-du down to the river to apologize to someone for eating one of his squid legs.

While down at the river, everyone sees this thing hanging from the bridge. The it drops into the water, obviously it's alive. Gang-du throws a beer can into the water, and the creature promptly eats it, to the cheers of the onlookers. The cheering stops when the creature comes on shore and starts to attack. Gang-du and a US army guy (he speaks english) try to fight off the beast. The army guy ends up with his arm bitten off and Gang-du runs, with the beast giving chase. Hyun-seo goes outside and sees the commotion. Her dad grabs her by the hand and they both run, but they fall, and in getting up Gang-du grabs the wrong girls hand. Hyun-seo gets killed by the creature who swims off.

The creature decided to brown bag it today, rather than order out.

The police put up a barricade at the river and everyone else goes to a memorial for those that got killed. Gang-du's brother and sister both come to the memorial, once there a biohazard team takes everyone into custody, and Gang-du has to undergo special tests because the creature got blood on him. See, the thought is that the creature is the host for a new virus, more deadly than SARS. And the government and the US military want to find this virus.

In the hospital, Gang-du gets a call from his daughter, she's still alive! And since no one believes them, they have to make their escape. Once out, the family begins their quest to find Hyun-seo. Only, they don't know where to look. All they know is that she's in the sewer somewhere.

Don't fire until you see the bubbly gook of their eyes!

From here, they have to avoid the police, the doctors, the US military and the creature while trying to find Hyun-seo until the inevitable showdown with the beast. It's 3 members of the Park family against 1 beast at the end.

The Host is a pretty groovy monster movie. A lot of fun, and the action looks great. It's a cgi beast and it looks pretty amazing most of the time. Though, they did do one thing that I know at least one person hates, cgi fire. Though, under the circumstances, it's an understandable decision. The movie does take a few shots at the US, since the creature is our fault, as well as criticizing blindly listening to your government. Over all, this was an excellent movie and I really recommend it. It opens stateside on March 9th, and if it's playing near you, go check it out. Especially if you dig movies about giant monsters who terrorize cities. You'll dig this one.

8 bowls of instant noodles while you're taking a break from looking for a family member who's been captured by a monster out of 10.