The Host (Gwoemul) Korean Monster Movie

Director's chair - good point of view?

Director about the movie

• When you first think of making a monster movie you have to realize that a lot of people may be down on you because there is a big prejudice against such films, and in Korea, within horror films, movies with sci-fi elements are at the bottom end of that, and even lower within that group are monster films. So before I started making The Host I knew going in that these sorts of attitudes were what I would be facing.

• From the years of 1979 to 1989, I lived by the Han River. Our apartment building was by the river. From my room, I was able to look down over the river. It was just there, even in my room. When you're in middle school, you do a lot of dumb daydreaming. Sometimes I would just look at the river for hours and that's where the first idea came from. Also, I was a huge fan of the Loch Ness Monster legend. I dreamed of going to Loch Ness. At the time, Loch Ness was too far, so I had to be happy with the Han River. There's nothing mysterious about it. It's so ordinary. So, I always wondered 'What if this ordinary space right before our eyes produced something like Nessie?' It's a combination of a very ordinary location added to a truly sci-fi Nessie-type creature. For a Western audience, it might feel a bit unfamiliar or foreign, but I would like it if they could think of an ordinary location near them. If you're in Chicago, think of the Chicago river. New York, the Hudson. Anything that has as far a distance from sci-fi as possible.

• I like it when seemingly inharmonious feelings are mixed together. And I think those moments expressed in the films are more realistic. The human emotions in real life are as subtle and complicated as that, and the film is the best medium to catch those emotions. When I choose a certain genre (Memories of Murder was a thriller, The Host was a monster film), I tend to do so because I want to break the conventions of the genre, not because to follow it. Thus, it is inevitable for my films to have a mix of different genres rather than belonging to one category.

• There was an actual case in Korea where all these fish were found in a polluted river with curved, deformed spines. They were a mutated form. With just the look, I wanted to bring along the history to what had happened to this creature and give hint to origins. And since it's curved, I'm assuming he'd kind of be in pain, so that kind of explains his bad temperament. So, that was the starting point - a fish with a curved spine. But some people think it looks like a tadpole or like a monkfish. Also, there were a lot of aspects dictated by the narrative. For instance, it needed to be able to swallow and then spit out a person, like a pelican. At one point, the design actually reflected a pelican-type beak. It also needed to quickly run across land. So the legs had to be strong and you saw the acrobatics under the bridge. All these points from the narrative had to be interpreted into the physical structure of the body. There were about 500 'monster hopefuls' in the process. Unfortunately, we only needed one.

• I really hated to wait more than one hour to see just the tip of the monster's tail in other creature films. So I decided to show the monster just 13 minutes after the opening of the film in broad daylight. I did it to break the convention of the film, but also the film's narrative required the early appearance of the monster. There's a kidnapping story and virus story that unfurls after the creature's attack.

• La Transperceneige is my second next project. Between The Host and La Transperceneige, I am planning to make a small but intense drama film. And if the script is good and if I can have 100 % control over the film, I don't care where I make the film.