SHADOWS Contactless: Friday July 31 9pm on SBS and Messenger: THE HOST

A laboratory slip-up delivers a starter culture for a big bad life form that appears years later. Like everyone else strolling by the river in Seoul on that sunny afternoon, the Park family are directly affected by the massive mutant beast that bounds up from the water and takes what it wants along the bank. Stunned, the remainder of the family have to deal.

But that's the point of this modern monster movie and many before it. Only part of the fun is in the great beast on the rampage. Most of it is about family. The dysfunctional unit has long been stretching into malaise for a generation and there's nothing like a crisis to being it together. But then there's nothing like bringing it together to foment more crisis.

Director Bong Joon Ho's greatness is that he is indifferent to the genre he's working in as long as he can forge a strong theme about the human animal and especially how it works (or doesn't) in community. His contemporary fable about families and privilege Parasite made it clear that the title didn't just refer to the obvious move. Similarly, The Host asks you where you think the monstrosity is. It is always a monster movie. It is always a family saga. It is frequently an irresistible comedy without ever having to stoop to the cheapness of lampooning the genre it's in. Such is the hand of a master of cinema.