It’s a battle of South and North Korean Kaijus in this week’s Ranking the Monsters. It’s Pulgasari vs. The Host, two fascinating productions with a world of difference between their styles and cultural expressions. Won’t you join us for this week’s Ranking the Monsters with guest host Vaughn.

The more Kaiju I see, the more I must advocate for the genre.

My rewatch of The Host reveals that the Kaiju formula is a nice fit for Bong Joon-ho, one of the sharpest directors of straightforward and unambiguous social commentary. When his films have a theme or a concept, it is not possible to overlook them, they are universal and developed with sincerity. Those same principles and beliefs, I’ve been finding, are the core of the most successful Kaiju pictures. Their social commentaries are evident and globally readable, the symbolism obvious and pointed. When Bong Joon-ho directs a picture it also always makes sense. He could make any kind of genre picture and I might say, yes, he was the perfect fit. His themes are expansive and will still fit in any bucket.

What’s fascinating about our selections this week is that they are both squarely anti-imperialist pictures, with varying perspectives from South and North Korea. The Host is a treaty between South Korea and America about American occupation. (Especially of the time, about America’s military ambitions, as news footage about The War in Iraq plays throughout.)

What’s so wonderful is that the film shows it’s hand outright. The first sequence is how the monster is created and then we see the monster. Yeah, American scientists are dropping toxic wastes into the water, and the Monster is the manifestation of Imperial greed. The US will occupy territories, introduce harmful elements, and then only focus on their own bravery in doing it.

The virus connection to the modern day is immaterial. It would be irresponsible to conflate these experiences. And yet, in the news, the idea has circulated so often that Covid was created in labs, that we can so easily imagine this scenario in our lives. There is a beautiful touch where the first viewing of the monster also mirrors the military dispersal machine for the Yellow Agent, as it’s called.

Because the film is so sincere, I have trouble occasionally reading what we ought to be worried about and what is played for laughs. Sometimes I’m laughing and concerned that it’s even the wrong moment, or a piece of the film has created an unintended response. While what the film is saying is clear as day, the tone in which it’s saying it isn’t always so clear. It gets significantly better about this as it moves into the second act and then the rest of the runtime.

What of the Kaiju? This tremendous, toxic slime of a Kaiju? He’s just wonderful isn’t he? What’s so great is that his movement captures something so classic in the imagination of the Kaiju Canon. He’s a grotesque and also clearly identifiable thematically. His design is well shaped and suited to the design of the movie.

There are also rich human characters here. We get to care about them. We are concerned with their plight. You can hinge a movie entirely upon Kang-Ho Song‘s presence. His performance connects us to everyone else and sells the most important revelations of the film. I haven’t walked away from a Kaiju really enamored with a performer who wasn’t wearing a suit, not as the most crucial piece of one of these movies, not until I revisited Kang-Ho Song‘s work in The Host. His presence and impact is even greater than the monsters. That’s worthy of high praise.

Imminently rewatchable, The Host keeps getting better the longer I live with it. It’s a special film from a special director with a special actor leading the way.

Join us for the Summer of South Korean Cinema, hosted by my dear friend Benjamin. Here’s my working list.