10 Horror Movie Monsters Who Make You EAT Your Words

10. Gwoemul -- The Host (2006)

Bong Joon Ho has had an eventful time of late, breaking into Western cinema with weighty Korean-language black comedy drama Parasite, and following up with an all-star sci-fi clone flick in Mickey 17. But he’s far from a new talent. Long before the director was rubbing shoulders with R-Patz and Tilda Swinton, he was dishing up sensational cross-genre flicks straight outta Seoul.

Never one to settle into a genre or rest on his laurels, Bong followed up two crime movies by dropping The Host in 2006, a monster movie in which a creature is born from a chemical spill in Han River and goes on the rampage. There’s only one catch: the monster, known as Gwoemul, is a giant tadpole. Given how ridiculous this sounds, it’s a surprise he even got the project funded.

But funding he got – $11 million of it. And Bong put this to use on creating a monster that is frightening, sympathetic and anything but silly. Tactfully keeping the creature in the background of most of his shots, Bong allows mystery and suspense to build around it, while showing precisely what it’s capable of as it slinks onto land and snatches people for its lair. It works a treat, and after the initial surprise at what you’re watching, it’s all too easy to forget that this is just one giant step up from frogspawn.