FILMPHLEGM™: The Host Is All It's Cracked Up To Be

Usually I'd only be this excited after seeing a movie because Anonymous A and I managed to score the two solitary wheelchair-accessible seats in the exact center of the theater. But actually, The Host was so good I didn't even mind having to read the subtitles. It has a very precise mixture of horror, melodrama and comedy that's just like the 2005 revival of Doctor Who (if it was a Korean horror movie).

One of the reviews of The Host that I've since read described it as "Jaws meets Little Miss Sunshine" which I would agree with if I didn't think Little Miss Sunshine was one of the most insipid, annoyingly cliched movies I've ever seen. The Host may be full of cliches, but its characters are actually likable, the plot is cohesive and stays cohesive until the very end, and the grandfather of the little girl doesn't ever give you the pedophilia heebie-jeebies like Alan Arkin did.

I could talk about all the other stuff like how it's a cerebrally post-modern re-envisioning of the Godzilla mythos, it's slyly anti-media, anti-government and anti-American, and it manages to put forth a strong message about the endurability of the family without being smarmy, but you can read that crap in all the professional reviews. What you really want to hear from me is that the monster is frigging AWESOME cuz it's got like five mouths and a prehensile tail and shit. Which is the truth. So just go see it.