In the year 2006 a South Korean Comedy Horror film named The Host was released.
A clusterfuck of a movie with its remixing genres, themes and classic storylines. Was I expecting the Korean film to be funny and terrifyingly bad, balancing it like two kids on a seesaw? No. But I’m glad it was. In fact, my experience with foreign films is that they’re exclusively horror and or art film based movies. From subscribing to Mubi one year out of curiosity, staying up late on SBS as a kid to seeing what pirated DVDs my Mum was given from the Philippines – is the literal extent of my knowledge of foreign traditional movie content.
Of course, I couldn’t keep up watching The Host, following the storyline, simultaneously reading the subtitles and live-tweeting my reactions to the movie. But I think it’s hilariously easy to figure out after you’ve moved your focus from film to phone and vice versa. Because The Host is, you guessed it, predictable. But that isn’t a bad thing, not just considering my experience but considering how absolutely jam-packed this movie is if you’re trying to extract a singular genre, theme or a general gist of a story. Maybe that applied to everyone but it was easy for me considering my experience of watching Filipino horror films pre-2009 with my Mother. Yes they were pirated, yes they were at like 248x248px quality stretched on an early-HD rear projection TV by LG – these films were loud, heavy with graphics and gore and they were so, strangely forgettable. I’d ask my Mum during these films If I was understanding the general story correctly instead of trying to decipher the Tagalog (because subtitles don’t exist on these pirated DVDs lol) and I was correct! A lot of dead children! – anyway. The point is that I used my self taught skills of looking at body language, actors’ extenuated work and other movie techniques to communicate the movie to myself. My experience with Filipino Horror movies made The Host easier to understand and interpret until I was seriously questioning the comedic side.
It’s only week one but I hope I don’t run into the same process I had to do to understand the content, but I know I will. After all, The Host (2006) was South Korean, surely the rest of Asia has more to offer than Comedy Horror films… (spoiler! i know they do).
Phillip's BCMS Blog 
Reblogged this on Digital Asia.
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Hey Phillip, I agree with categorising this film to be a ‘clusterfuck’ due to the combination of genre and dramatised scenarios. However, the comedic elements throughout met with political satire allowed me to thoroughly enjoy this movie. Although you deemed this movie to be predictable, I went into this film absolutely blind as Korean comedic horror films are definitely not familiar to me and I honestly had no idea what to expect. My mother, like yours, also purchased pirated films from the local Sydney markets yet none of them were Asian films, they were all Western romance, horror or psychological thrillers but the use of English made these films extremely easy to follow. This then reminds me of the study of cultural proximity in BCM289 which follows the idea that we consume forms of media familiar to us and easier to engage in, particularly on the basis of understanding the language. And for myself, this is 100% truthful as Digital Asia is taking me out of my ‘comfort’ zone so to speak.
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I absolutely love your description of the film and can totally relate to you staying up watching foreign films on SBS. For me, it waS those boring days at home watching REday Steady Cook and foreign films (A lot of Spanish films weirdly enough) at like 12pm on SBS. I had never really noticed that the eastern films that us westerners seem to consume are the more artsy-fartsy/horror films till you pointed it out. This makes total sense and I completely agree. It’s interesting how a film/story can be predictable and yet good, hey? Just like ‘The hero’s journey’ a story needs to have a logical progression and that can often make it more enjoyable rather than having to subvert expectations
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