What a swell party

And a great host! Oooh, bad pun. But up to my usual standard.
I recently watched "The Host" ("Gwoemul" in Korea) with my eight month old son. Well he slept through most of it actually. If only he knew what he had missed.
The film starts with the creation of a toxic soup which allows a mutant fish/amphibian type thing to develop. It then moves to a scenario that seems to appear in many Korean/Asian films - a typical family set-up. Well perhaps not typical as they seem to live in a kiosk in the banks of the Han river in Seoul. But they seem happy enough.
The happiness is soon shattered when the greatly-increased-in-size animal appears and begins to chomp through the customers. It all goes pear-shaped from there on in, with dolops of Korean slapstick, pathos, anti-establishment sentiment and death. I cried, but then I always do. Cuddling sonny-boy for the duration didn't help like.
The CGI creature is pretty good considering the budget and the fact I am still not convinced by much of the use that CGI has been put to.
I'm pretty sure there is a great political sub-text in the film, but not being up on the history of South Korea I couldn't tell you what it is. They don't seem too keen on the Yanks much anyhow.
I didn't find it scary as such, but there were good periods of tension. It was pretty funny, with the aforementioned slapstick adding the (seemingly necessary in nearly all Japanese/Korean films I have seen) light relief.

Best thing I have seen for a while, 8/10