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.

Eight-legged films

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Asylum version) started me thinking about this: For no reason at all, a quick round up of some of my favourite creature flicks over the years:

Spiders (2000): This is what happens when special effects technicians get to direct films. What you get is conspiracy theorists, genetic experimentation, secretive government agencies, a couple claiming to be alien immigrants, creepy crawlies, and the Space Shuttle - all in the first ten minutes. The heroine is a feisty college rag journalist who would rather interview the said immigrants than cover any serious science stories; while Mother-in-Law and her offspring are worthy additions to the Hall of Fame of cinematic monsters. As far as I can tell the whole spectrum of special effects are employed here, from costume and puppetry through stop-motion to CGI, as each generation of spiders, larger than the last, presents new cinematic challenges.

There is a sequel - Spiders 2 (2001) - linked to the first film only in that it is another film featuring large numbers of giant spiders, this time running amok on a container ship.

Other notable arachnid-inspired films: Arachnid (2001): jungle survival film commits the cardinal sin of taking itself too seriously, particularly given the silly ending; yet at its best contains echoes of Predator.

Arachnaphobia (1990): unusually focus is on small, or at least normal-range spiders. As you might expect from a Spielberg production this is very effective visual cinema, and I remember this film as being extremely creepy.

Eight-Legged Freaks (2002): does exactly what it says on the tin (as I may have read in a review at the time). Hilarious from the outset, with a Mars Attacks attitude to body count and superb cgi - I read somewhere that first they tried to scale up realistic spiders but these were too cute and not scary enough. Everything's there - radiation, the small boy who sees everything but whom no-one believes, etc. Curiously the Achilles heel of the spiders (every B-movie monster needs an idiosyncratic weakness - see Evolution for more details) turns out to be that they are vulnerable to gunfire.

Tarantula (1955): the original giant spider, still a highly enjoyable film.

In searching for the illustration I discovered I haven't covered even half of this topic - will need to further research the titles "Earth Vs The Spider" and "Kingdom of the Spiders" amongst others...