91Èȱ¬

Action, slapstick, and melodrama lurk alongside whip-smart horror shocks in Bong Joon-ho's delicious creature flick The Host. Dim-witted Park Gang-du works on his father's food stand by the Han river. The life of the Parks, and the city, are turned upside down when a bus-sized mutant emerges from the waters and sets about hundreds of screaming Seoulites. Effortlessly comic, delightfully extreme, and echoing Jaws, Alien and Godzilla along the way, The Host is a monster.

In the bloody, spectacular riverside chaos, Gang-du's pre-teen daughter Hyun-seo is carried off in the creature's jaws. Regurgitated in the monster's bone-strewn lair, she calls her grieving father from her cell phone - triggering his and the rest of the family's wild attempts to find her. The Korean and US governments, though, in a confusion of cover-up, casual sadism and an astutely observed post-SARS and 9/11 institutional panic, have other ideas.

"WILL KEEP YOU ON YOUR TOES"

A couple of lower-grade effects shots aside, the film looks wonderful - particularly the initial daylight catastrope - while the signature Korean genre-twisting will keep everyone on their toes. The cast sell their characters' cruel and extraordinary tale with verve, and the monster - brought to weighty and menacing life by the effects teams behind Lord Of The Rings and Babe - is a memorably deadly addition to the creature hall of fame.