The Host

"Man has made his newest predator."

2006 2h 0m KO

👍

7.0

SOLID

🔥

93%

CERTIFIED FRESH

💯

METACRITIC

⭐

7.1

IMDB

★7.0TMDB · 3,256🍅93%Rotten Tomatoes●85Metacritic★7.1IMDB · 140,796

HorrorDramaScience Fiction

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

A teenage girl is captured by a giant mutated squid-like creature that appears from Seoul's Han River after toxic waste was dumped in it, prompting her family into a frantic search for her.

“Man has made his newest predator.”

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Cast

Song Kang-ho
Park Gang-du
Byun Hee-bong
Park Hie-bong
Park Hae-il
Park Nam-il
Bae Doona
Park Nam-joo
Ko Asung
Park Hyun-seo
Oh Dal-su
The Monster (voice)
Lee Jae-eung
Se-jin
Lee Dong-ho
Se-joo

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Bong Joon Ho
Writers: Bong Joon Ho, Baek Chul-hyun, Hah Jun-won
Languages: English, Korean
Countries: South Korea

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Made its money back 8.0× over at the box office.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 20 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Korean.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Bong Joon Ho, shot by Kim Hyung-koo. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Lee Byung-woo. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Kim Sun-min shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Song Kang-ho and Byun Hee-bong and Park Hae-il carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "Man has made his newest predator.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Bong Joon Ho directs. Kim Hyung-koo behind the camera. Lee Byung-woo scores. Kim Sun-min cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in South Korea. Dialogue in English, Korean.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Made its money back 8.0× over at the box office.
2Released 20 years ago.
3Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Korean.
4Directed by Bong Joon Ho, shot by Kim Hyung-koo. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Lee Byung-woo. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Kim Sun-min shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Song Kang-ho and Byun Hee-bong and Park Hae-il carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "Man has made his newest predator.".
9IMDB entry: tt0468492 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Classified under 17 themes, including "daughter", "pollution", "monster", "river".
11Released under 11 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Kim Hyung-koo
Original score: Lee Byung-woo
Editing: Kim Sun-min
Production design: Ryu Seong-hie
Costume design: Cho Sang-kyung
Makeup / hair: Kwak Tae-yong
Sound: Coll Anderson
Runtime: 120 min · 2h 0m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $11,000,000
Box office: $88,489,643
Return: 804% of budget
Original language: KO
Certification (US): R
IMDB: The Host (2006)
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 85/100
IMDB rating: 7.1/10 · 140,796 votes
MPAA: R

Awards

30 wins & 37 nominations total

Also by

Bong Joon Ho

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Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Peter McGinn2021-12-13
★ 6/10
This is a monster horror movie that really tries, to the point where they don’t give a clear view of the creature in the previews, presumably not to ruin the initial shock moment for the viewer. It is in Korean with English subtitles, with a few bursts of English with Korean subtitles when the speaker is American. The movie focuses on one family’s ongoing battle: not merely against the monster but also struggling against the authorities who want to capture them, suspecting they have been infected with a virus by coming in contact with the creature. The dialogue is pretty ordinary. I seem to recall a few unintentionally funny moments, though I cannot say for sure that it wasn’t due to the translation. I don’t intend to be hyper critical here: I sort of let the movie wash over me to get to the end, and you may or may not need to do the same. I found I was a little confused as to the final fate of one of the family members at the end. Perhaps I was inattentive and it would have been cleared up if I backed it up and watched again, but unfortunately I wasn’t quite inversted in the movie enough to do that. I put in my time and that was sufficient unto the day.
GeekyRedhead2024-06-18
★ 8/10
These sites all missed the point. It's farce, it's funny. I actually liked the creature! He's kinda gruesomely-cute! Don't expect drama. It's all tongue-in-cheek, reminiscent of the old Godzilla creature films.
badelf2026-07-08
★ 8/10
Summary: 8/10: inventive, genre-defying filmmaking that uses monster movie conventions to deliver sharp political critique and genuine emotional resonance. A U.S. Army coroner orders an underling to dump many toxic chemicals into the Han River. Six years later, a monster crawls out and starts destroying people. If this were an ancient folktale, or even a Bong Joon-ho film (which, of course, it is), the monster would be a metaphor for the anger of the water spirit, nature's violent response to human desecration. The best part of this movie is the impressive creature design and animation. The creature looks like no film monster before it: amphibious, awkward, surprisingly fast, with a prehensile tail and a mouth that opens in ways that violate every expectation. It's totally creative, a testament to Bong's vision and his creature design team's execution. Joon-ho proves once again his creativity and willingness to surprise the viewer, refusing to give us a Godzilla knockoff or a standard kaiju. And also, typically for Bong, the film doesn't fit neatly into any genre. Not really horror, not quite a monster movie. It contains elements of horror, comedy, pathos, social commentary, and has something to say not only about the big issue of environmental catastrophe but also about family, loyalty, and the ways ordinary people respond when institutions fail them. The Park family at the center, bumbling, dysfunctional, deeply human, become unlikely heroes not through competence but through sheer desperate love. Bong's social commentary targets what the U.S. and other advanced civilizations have done to clean water worldwide. The film's opening, based on a real incident of U.S. military pollution in South Korea, sets the stage for everything that follows. The statistics are damning: approximately 50% of assessed river and stream miles across the U.S. (703,417 miles) are classified as "impaired" due to pollution. Agricultural runoff, mostly by agribusiness, is estimated by the USDA to account for 80% of water pollution in U.S. rivers and lakes. Millions of Americans are exposed to forever chemicals. The Host asks what "invisible monsters" are we creating through our carelessness, our arrogance, our willingness to poison the natural world for convenience and profit.