Bong Joon Ho says the 20th-anniversary restoration of The Host has made the 2006 monster movie feel newly urgent. Speaking to Variety, the Oscar-winning director argued that its satire of official misinformation now resonates amid the current Iran War and ongoing global conflict.
“Now we’re in the thick of the Iran War and we’re still in the midst of an ongoing war, and whether it’s good history or bad history, it seems like we as a community, as a whole, are repeating our mistakes,” Bong said. “Although the film has stayed the same, the history is repeating itself and making the film relevant again.”
Magnolia Pictures will return the remastered The Host to theaters nationwide on Nov. 20. Screenings on Nov. 21 and Nov. 23 will include an exclusive recorded conversation between Bong and filmmaker Edgar Wright.
Bong said the restoration was designed to recreate the experience of seeing a fresh 35mm print, as audiences did when the film premiered at Cannes in 2006. The Host was shot on Fuji stock rather than Kodak, and Bong wanted to restore the subtle color qualities he developed with cinematographer Kim Hyung-ku.
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“Ironically, we were using digital technology to enhance the film look of the movie,” Bong said.
Because the creature effects were created in 2005 and 2006, before 4K technology was available, those shots had to be upscaled. Bong said the team worked carefully to ensure the monster still blended convincingly with the actors and settings, and said he was satisfied with the result.
Bong acknowledged that he still notices minor flaws in the CGI and moments that leave him slightly dissatisfied. But he resisted the urge to alter the film.
“But I believe that the film is a record of what I was as a filmmaker at the time, and so I do not have any wishes to correct that,” he said. “Just like we don’t edit or rewrite our journals, I feel like it should just be left as it is.”
He said he briefly considered cutting one or two shots, citing Ridley Scott’s decision to remove footage from the 1979 re-release of Alien. In the end, Bong held back.
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“I also had that kind of impulse, but luckily I was able to hold myself back,” he said. “It wasn’t a lot of shots. It was only one or two shots where I thought maybe I could cut that out, but in the end, I just resisted the impulse.”
Bong wrote The Host with the SARS outbreak in mind. Its scene in which U.S. lawmakers concede there never was a virus spreading through Korea was a satire of the misinformation surrounding the Iraq War, which was launched over weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
Two decades later, Bong sees a similar pattern in the present. The coronavirus pandemic, he said, and now the Iran War have given the film’s warnings about official narratives and public fear a renewed relevance.
The restored film stars Song Kang-ho as Gang-du, a snack-kiosk worker whose daughter Hyun-seo, played by Ko A-sung, is abducted by a creature that emerges from Seoul’s Han River. Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il and Bae Doo-na co-star as his family members.
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Bong also revisited the film’s sound design, which he created at Seoul’s Livetone with a sound supervisor he has worked with for 25 years. The creature’s voice combined processed sea-lion recordings with a vocal performance from Korean actor Oh Dal-su.
While Bong said The Host could be upgraded to Dolby Atmos, he has not confirmed which sound format the North American release will use. He sees less need to remaster his later films, which were shot in 4K and finished in Atmos, though he has made black-and-white versions of Mother and Parasite for select theatrical and festival screenings.
Looking ahead, Bong confirmed that after his animated feature Ally, he plans to make a slate of crime and horror films. “I want to return home,” he said.
