Bong Joon Ho’s The Host Returns to Theaters (in 4K!)
The Host is the film where Bong Joon Ho figured out how to make a monster movie feel like it's about everything at once. The creature itself is almost a MacGuffin next to the real horror: bureaucratic incompetence, American military arrogance, and a family that refuses to fall apart even as the world around them does. Watching it again in 4K will probably just make the details pop harder, the mud on the riverbank, the screaming crowds, the quiet desperation of a father who will do anything for his daughter.
I'm curious what Bong and Edgar Wright will talk about. Wright has always worn his genre influences on his sleeve, but Bong tends to smuggle his in through the back door. The Host works because it never winks at you, even when it's being absurd. It treats its monster with the same seriousness it treats its politics, which is exactly why it holds up nearly two decades later. If this screening gets people to revisit the film, good. If it gets them to think about what we let swim beneath the surface, better.