Years after a U.S. Army laboratory secretly dumped toxic chemicals into the Han River, a carnivorous mutant emerges to wreak havoc on Seoul. The resulting carnage reveals Bong’s evident joy in cinematic storytelling to be as omnivorous as the film’s monster, with The Host unfurling suspense, slapstick, furious action sequences, biting social satire and geopolitical commentary, dark humor and, above all, a love of genre convention and its subversion. Yet by focusing the story on one family’s attempt to survive, Bong clearly emphasizes human behavior and emotion rather than offering a more abstract cautionary tale of a disinformation spreading government, even as the monster itself suggests an allegorical figure of consumerism run amok.