PRGAAMWA DVD Fight: The Host vs. Puzzlehead

I don’t think The Host even opened in my city, but I’d seen the trailer on another DVD and thought, “Duuuuuuuuude. . . ” (I’m not sure when I started saying “dude” again). Puzzlehead didn’t open anywhere, but the cover was so obviously a rip-off of Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound that I had to rent it.

John threw his back out while we were watching The Host. Not because he was lifting something heavy – he just jumped that hard at one point.

I like monster movies even though I don’t find many of them to be particularly good. They’re light and fun and, hopefully, really gross. But, The Host is the best monster movie I’ve seen in years because it’s not just about the monster. The monster – a hungry, mutated, giant amphibious thing – is really secondary to the family at the center of the movie.

Park Gang-du works at a food stand by the river with his father, Hee-bong, and his daughter, Hyun-seo. Gang-du’s sister, Nam-joo, is a an archer who can’t break third place, and his brother, Nam-il, is an unemployed, college educated drunk. Individually, they’re screw ups, but when they come together, they are a complete disaster. But, when Hyun-seo – the only one with any wits about her – is carried off by the monster, the family has to get it together to rescue her.

That message of family cooperation runs through the movie. When the family members tried doing anything to save Hyun-seo individually, they failed. It was only when they worked together that they had any success against the monster.

The Host was really good for the first hour or so, then it slowed down considerably when it stopped being a monster movie and became a family drama. It was a pretty jarring switch, and just as jarring in the final scenes when it became a monster movie again.

And then there was Puzzlehead, which I rented because I thought it would be funny.

The quote on the cover,”Mines the Frankenstein myth and finds psychosexual gold!” makes Puzzlehead sound really trashy, like the kind of movie you’d rent to watch in between The Apple and The Dinah Shore Portal to Hell in the middle of August when the cable has gone out and it’s too hot to get up from the couch and pick up a book from the ottoman.

Puzzlehead is far from trashy and is the kind of science fiction that will disappoint audiences because it doesn’t rely on special effects and aliens and hullabaloo to hold attention. It’s more of an arty psychological exploration of ethics and humanity and how people relate to one another.

Set in a bleak future when the world is vastly depopulated, Walter, the resident mad scientist, builds an android, awkwardly named Puzzlehead, in his own image – both physical and mental. When both man and android fall for the same quiet deli clerk, trouble arises and each version of Walter tries to rid himself of the other.

Puzzlehead is quiet and sparse and paced like my great-grandma driving to the grocery store. But the pace is steady and it works with the barren setting. The psychodrama reminds me of Solaris, but grittier and much smaller in scale, which makes it a more intimate experience.

Pretentious Lisa wants to go with Puzzlehead for this match, but it’s not something I want to watch again unless I was teaching a class on making science fiction movies with no budget (if the director, James Bai, gets some money behind him, he could do something awesome). Puzzlehead is worth watching, but The Host is much more engaging. The Host wins.

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