Reception
The Host premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2006 and was released nationally in South Korea on July 27, 2006. Having been heavily hyped and featuring one of the most popular leading actors in the country, Song Kang-ho, the film was released on a record number of screens and made the South Korean record books with its box office performance during its opening weekend. The 2.63 million admissions and $17.2 million box office revenue easily beat the previous records set by Typhoon. The film reached six million viewers on August 6, 2006. In early September the film became South Korea's all time box office leader, selling more than 12.3 million tickets in just over a month in a country of 48.5 million. By the end of its run on November 8, the viewing figures came in at 13,019,740.
The film was released theatrically in Australia on August 17, 2006. During the first half of September 2006, it premiered in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Hong Kong. It received a theatrical release in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2006. This was its first official release outside of film festivals, and outside Asia and Australia. Its American release was March 9, 2007. It was or is planned to be released in several other countries; among them are France, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, and Spain.
The Host received screenings on several film festivals. In addition to its opening in Cannes, among the most prominent were the Toronto, Tokyo and New York film festivals. The film swept Korea's Blue Dragon Awards : The Host received five awards, Go Ah-sung took Best New Actress and Byeon Hee-bong was awarded as Best Supporting Actor.
The French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma ranked the film as 3rd place in its list of best films of the year 2006. The Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo selected it as one of the top 10 best foreign films of the year 2006. (Flags of Our Fathers won the best foreign film of the year 2006.)
With a limited American release starting March 11, 2007, The Host garnered very positive reviews, with a 92% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In addition, it was ranked one of the top films of 2007 on Metacritic with a score of 85 out of 100. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote "The Host is a loopy, feverishly imaginative genre hybrid about the demons that haunt us from without and within." The filmmaker Quentin Tarantino included it in his list of top 20 films released since 1992 (the year he became a director).
Read more about this topic: The Host (2006 Film)
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