Before directing The Host, the greatest mutant-monster movie of all time, Bong Joon-Ho composed world cinema's smartest polemic against the practice of torture. In Memories of Murder–a thinly fictionalized account of the mishandling of South Korea's first serial-murder case by the then-overzealous authorities–abusing suspects is shown to be not only wrong but stupid, since anyone will confess to anything if you punch them in the face hard enough, leaving you no further ahead than you were before.

There is a political dimension to The Host as well, even though at the time the Georgia Straight met with the affable writer-director during last year's Vancouver film festival, his brainchild had already attracted more than 13 million viewers, thereby making it the most successful South Korean feature of all time. Bong was accompanied by an interpreter but availed himself of her services only when seeking clarification of the questions he was asked. The answers were all his own.

"The opening sequence [of the U.S. military dumping massive amounts of formaldehyde into the Han River in Seoul] was based on an actual case that happened almost six years ago," Bong explained. "It was a very big event which caused a very big scandal. It's also a fairly basic comment on South Korea's political relationship with America."

In the film, this act of willful pollution results in the creation of a murderous underwater creature that darkens the lives of a "lower-class, very dysfunctional, very Korean family".

Even this, it seems, has its basis in reality. "In the 1980s," the director continued, "mutant fish were discovered in the Han River, which was our main location. While we had to add legs, the monster's body was based on these mutant fish."

There are a lot of computer-generated images in The Host, and the monster movie is not an indigenous South Korean genre, so CGI experts were brought in from Australia and New Zealand to assist their Korean counterparts.

"The basic concept between me and my creature designer was that we needed to make a monster very different from the western tradition of the dragon. We had to make a more realistic creature that would be in harmony both with the Korean actors and the Korean backgrounds."

As for the film's noticeable lack of splatter, Bong said with a laugh, "I don't like Asian extremes or hard gore. That's just my personal taste."

And with regards to the emotional and intellectual inadequacies of the people who must do battle with the beast, Bong has no doubts as to the cause. "There is no mother or grandmother in this family, no mothers for two generations. That's why these people are so dysfunctional, because in Korean families–and perhaps this is true all over the world–the mother is always the strongest individual."