South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is the best reviewed film of 2019 according to Metacritic and the most successful foreign language film at the US box office since Pan's Labyrinth in 2006. It now has six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Many are wondering if it can make history and become the first foreign language film to win Best Picture; it certainly seems to be the nominee that would cause the least backlash if it wins.
If Parasite is your first time getting swept up into the #BongHive hype, note that Bong Joon-ho has directed six other similarly acclaimed and genre-bending features. His 2003 true crime film Memories of Murder is set for a theatrical re-release later this year, while his 2000 feature debut Barking Dogs Never Bite and his 2009 mystery Mother are both streaming on Shudder. Readers of CBR, however, would probably be most interested in Bong Joon-ho's three science fiction films: The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja.
THE HOST
Before Cloverfield, Pacific Rim and both the American and Japanese reboots of Godzilla, Bong Joon-ho's The Host brought new life into the kaiju genre back in 2006. Absolutely not to be confused with the Stephenie Meyer book and movie with the same English title, The Host's Korean title more literally translates to simply "Monster," and the film's as direct with its intentions as its title. Unlike other monster movies that try to hide their big beasts for suspense, The Host gives you the giant-mutant-amphibian-abomination mayhem you came for right from the beginning.
Yet, The Host is a lot more than just a monster movie. Like the original Godzilla, it's not even trying to hide its angry political subtext about war and environmentalism. It's also extremely funny, a dysfunctional family comedy that evokes the human elements of Jaws as much as it foretells Bong's future success, Parasite. Song Kang-ho has starred in four different Bong Joon-ho films, but the pure idiocy of his unlikely hero Park Gang-du in The Host stands out as his funniest performance.
SNOWPIERCER
Loosely based on the French graphic novel series, the 2013 film Snowpiercer should have been a blockbuster in the United States. A mostly English language post-apocalyptic action film where Chris Evans leads a working class rebellion through a futuristic train in what could be described as "Hunger Games meets Bioshock" shouldn't have been difficult to sell. Why didn't it get a wide release? As with many problems in Hollywood, blame Harvey Weinstein, who shuttered it off to a video-on-demand release when Bong refused to accept his proposed cuts.
If you haven't seen it, Snowpiercer is highly recommended. At once crowd-pleasing and deeply idiosyncratic, the movie combines brutal fights, absurd humor and heavy philosophical horror. The international cast of actors is great, and Tilda Swinton's upper-crust Minister Mason is a stand out. A long-delayed TV adaptation will eventually air on TNT or TBS or HBOMax or somewhere (it's changed network plans multiple times already).
OKJA
Enough people streamed The Host and Snowpiercer that Netflix decided to give Bong Joon-ho carte blanche to do whatever he wanted in one of the streaming service's first original prestige films in 2017. The result was Okja, a fable about a girl and her "super pig" that may very well be the strangest film Bong ever directed.
The premise of Okja seems simple enough: An agribusiness has genetically engineered 26 "super pigs" and set up a contest to see who can breed the best pig for eventual slaughter. Young Mija, however, loves her pig, Okja, too much to let him become bacon, and travels from South Korea to New York City to rescue him. It's a premise that could be used for a family film, and Okja often feels like one, but then come the graphic scenes showcasing the extreme cruelty of the slaughterhouse.
Okja isn't entirely successful in its big tonal gambles (Jake Gyllenhaal gives a performance that can only be described as baffling), but it sure isn't easy to forget, and the central girl-and-her-pig relationship is heartfelt.
Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Parasite stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik and Park So-dam. It is available for digital download and still playing in select theaters. It comes to DVD and Blu-Ray on January 28.