The Host괴물

The Host (괴물, "Monster" in Korean) is a 2006 South Korean monster film directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho (봉준호). Song Kang-ho (송강호) plays the food-stand vendor Park Gang-du, whose daughter Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung, 고아성) is taken by a creature living in Seoul's Han River; Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il and Bae Doona play his father, brother and sister. It was produced by Chungeorahm Film and distributed in Korea by Showbox, and runs 119 minutes.¹

An unfinished cut premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2006. The finished film opened in South Korea on July 27, 2006 on 620 screens, then a record, and its 2.63 million opening-weekend admissions beat the records set by Typhoon (2005). It finished its nine-week run with 13,019,740 admissions, No. 8 among the highest-grossing Korean films in KOBIS's figures, and was the most-watched Korean film until 2014. It reached US cinemas on March 9, 2007 through Magnolia Pictures.¹²

The Host won Best Film at the 27th Blue Dragon Film Awards, one of Bong's three wins in that category alongside Mother (2009) and Parasite (2019), and Wikipedia notes it received the inaugural Asian Film Award for Best Film.¹³