'The Host'

South Korea is very weird in how it ranks its films in terms of popularity.

In the United States (and everywhere else, I think), we rank films based on the amount of money it makes at the box office.

In South Korea, at least, they rank on them on how many times the film's been seen. Bong Joon-ho's film Memories of a Murder was seen more than five million times in South Korea. This success pumped up the anticipation for his follow-up, The Host.

The latter was seen 13 million times. Since there's little to no context on how successful it is, just know it was the highest grossing film in South Korea at the time (and still is, I think). It's like South Korea's Titanic.

The film was inspired by an actual event when a Korean doctor, working for the United States, poured an inordinate amount of formaldehyde into a drain and into Han River in Seoul.

In the film, it results in a giant, man-eating, child-stealing river monster. In real life, it resulted in pissed off Koreans.

Although the film is a crisply-made sci-fi film, it's wonderfully hilirious, at times heartbreaking and working at a nice pace. In the end, you feel kind of good. Like there's some redemption although Joon-ho was not scared to take everything out on his characters and spiritually sap them.