Chekov's Crossbow [Review: The Host]

"If you show a gun in the first act it had better have been fired by the third act" - Alfred Hitchcock, presumably paraphrasing Anton Chekov.

The Host (not to be confused with The Host by Stephenie Meyer, reviewed here) is a Korean horror film and one of the greatest monster films ever: the story of one dysfunctional, bickering family's quest to rescue schoolgirl Hyun-Seo from a gigantic newt-like creature that has emerged from the polluted Han river. Where a Western film might separate two lovers, here we have a mobile-phone obsessed daughter, a loving but brain-damaged, childish and narcoleptic father, an uncle who is college-educated and unemployable, the wise but stubborn grandfather, and the aunt who is an international sportswoman.

It is here that the principle of Chekov's Gun applies: Nam-Joo (Doona Bae) appears on television in an early scene, juxtaposed with the scenes of monster rampage chaos outside the caravan. When she hesitates before firing her crossbow, earning a time penalty and losing out on the gold, you feel you know exactly how this film is going to end. Your prediction will be both right and wrong. Chekov's Gun is indeed fired; however the ending is neither a classic triumphant parade nor a classic horror-film twist in the tail - instead the film closes on an understated, melancholy note.

Doona Bae as Nam-Joo

I thought the cinematography was stunning, from the stark laboratory-set opening introducing the theme of chemical pollution, to the claustrophobic action in the sewers, to the final confrontation and scenes of chemical warfare there are too many memorable shots to count. The film also succeeds in making you love the cast of grief-stricken and unlikely heroes who try, fail and try again.

The Ladies Vanish

Flightplan (2005) is a re-make of The Lady Vanishes (1938), linked by a common theme - the disappearance of a travelling companion and doubt as to whether she existed at all; the same plot device is used in both films to resolve this highly paranoid middle phase of the plot, and both lead to straightforward action climaxes. Flightplan isn't quite science fiction - although it's set on a futuristic, advanced airliner, this doesn't have a huge impact on the plot.

Hitchcock's film is hard to fault - I found the comic relief sequences tended to jar with the rest of the film but overall The Lady Vanishes is very effective psychodrama. Flightplan is seriously flawed - supposedly post 9/11 however this is only true superficially - a knee-jerk reaction for many of the passengers is to blame a group of "suspicious" Arabs for the mysterious happenings. For some reason these curious characters are called upon to apologise to Jodie Foster later in the film - I'm trying not to think too hard about what's being said symbolically here. Once the mystery is uncovered things actually degenerate into the kind of high-altitude shenanigans that could only really happen before 9/11 as these days the plane would probably have been shot down about half an hour before the end of the film. And, this is a newly designed, high security plane. You can't get in or out of the cockpit - but it seems you can easily get from the toilet cubicles into the cargo space (admittedly if you, the heroine, happen to have designed the plane).

For all this, the tension is maintained by the quality of the acting and camerawork, making excellent use of a large but claustrophobic set.