The Han River monster has been on a long vacation from American theaters, and Magnolia Pictures is calling it back. On October 28 the distributor released a trailer for a new 4K restoration of Bong Joon Ho's The Host, a 20th anniversary re-release that Magnolia lists as playing theaters on November 21 and 23.
What you're actually getting
Magnolia describes this as a restoration, not a new cut, so don't expect added scenes. What's new is the picture and the extras: the presentation includes an exclusive conversation with Bong, and Dark Horizons reports it is a recorded conversation between Bong and director Edgar Wright. No one has said how long it runs or whether it plays before the movie, so treat that as a promising detail rather than a promise. A digital release follows on November 30.
A date caveat
The dates are not settled across the coverage. Magnolia's own release page says "exclusively in theaters" on November 21 and 23, and FilmoFilia adds limited November 20 bookings in New York and Austin. Earlier announcements from Dread Central, Fangoria and others described a nationwide opening on November 20. Showtimes also depend on the individual theater, so check local listings before you plan a night around it.
A new poster for The Host (2006)
Why it still holds up
For anyone who hasn't seen it: a food-stand vendor (Song Kang-ho) watches a creature from Seoul's Han River snatch his daughter, and his family breaks out of a government quarantine to find her. It is a monster movie where the monster is the least surprising part. The real engine is a dysfunctional family, a bungling state response and a virus scare that turns out to be mostly bureaucracy. Bong cut political satire, slapstick and genuine grief into the same scene, and it still works. The creature came from Weta Workshop with visual effects by The Orphanage, and on a reported budget of around $11 million it held up better than plenty of bigger monsters.
[AFFILIATE: Bong Joon Ho's Parasite 4K Criterion]
Song Kang-ho stars in The Host and Parasite (the featured photo is from the Parasite cast), so this is a good excuse to see Bong's earlier creature feature on a big screen.
Is it worth leaving the house for a movie you can stream? A restored 2006 creature feature with the director talking about it two decades on is about as good an argument as theaters get.
Featured image: the Parasite cast and director Bong Joon-ho, 2019 (not from The Host). Photo: Kinocine PARKJEAHWAN4wiki / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.