The hapless heroine is endearing, the family eccentric and comedic and, yes, there's something nasty at the bottom of the garden – well, the river, actually. Yep, the 'creature feature' is back with the Australian release of Korean blockbuster The Host, a tale of pollution and mutation on a grand scale in present-day Seoul.

Korea's highest-grossing movie to date begins with a massive chemical contamination of Seoul's River Han. Soon, a giant amphibian with a taste for human flesh rises from the polluted waters.

A family running a popular riverside cafe finds itself caught up in the centre of the action when the youngest member, the 10-year-old granddaughter of the cafe owner, is snatched by the monster and swept away to its lair deep in the Seoul sewers.

The family gives chase but finds they are thwarted and separated by the military and civil authorities who arrive to seal off the area. There is talk of a virus and the girl's father soon finds himself quarantined to become the recipient of some very dubious medical treatment. One by one, however, the family evade officialdom to begin their descent into the sewers and close in on the monster for the final confrontation.

That final battle is more poignant than spectacular and includes, as does the movie as a whole, critical references to what humanity has done, and is prepared to do, to impose its will on the planet.

It's such offbeat touches that remove The Host a little from the norm. At 115 minutes, it's fully half an hour too long for the slender plot, and the various excursions into family dynamics dilute the material rather than enrich it. The various dead-ends endured by individual members also render the pace of the film uneven.

That said, The Host is fun and well worth a look. The production is flawless and the animatronics and computer graphics used to generate the 'bad guy' are spot on. It's a rollick, just don't expect the slickness of Hollywood.