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Review: Thrilling and devastating, ‘Parasite’ is one of the year’s very best movies

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The first thing you see in Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” a thriller of extraordinary cunning and emotional force, is an upper window in a tiny underground apartment. From this high, narrow vantage the Kims, a resilient family of four, peer onto a grubby Seoul street strewn with garbage bags and electrical wires — an ugly view made worse by a drunk who often turns up to relieve himself right outside. Sometime later the Kims will stand before a much larger window, as big and beautiful as a cinema screen, in an enormous house with a gorgeous sunlit garden. It’s not just a different view; it’s a different world.

From the outset of this deviously entertaining movie, which recently became the first South Korean film to win the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes, every detail of the Kims’ hardscrabble existence is on blunt display. In an early scene, high school graduate Ki-woo (Choi Woo Shik) and his sister, Ki-jung (Park So Dam), scurry around their cramped bathroom with their phones held aloft, hunting for a free Wi-Fi signal. You register the clutter of their apartment with its discarded clothes, mildewed tiles and skittering stinkbugs. You watch the Kims fold and assemble pizza boxes for a nearby restaurant, the closest any of them has recently come to landing a job.

But you also notice the close bonds between brother and sister, as well as the easy rapport they share with their boisterous father, Ki-taek (Song Kang Ho), and sharp-witted mother, Chung-sook (Chang Hyae Jin). Living together in close quarters has bred in them a matter-of-fact intimacy and a wily self-sufficiency.

Bong has never been one to ennoble or romanticize his characters’ poverty, but he does invest them with a terrific rooting interest. “Parasite,” with its tough, unsentimental view of people doing what they must to survive, initially suggests an evil twin to “Shoplifters,” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s lovely drama about a family of petty thieves (which, incidentally, won the Palme last year).

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But the movie swiftly establishes its own unpredictable agenda not long after Ki-woo inherits an English tutoring job from a college-student friend (Park Seo Joon). The pupil in question is an upper-class teenage girl, Park Da-hye (Jung Ziso), and their lessons will take place in the gated modernist fortress she calls home. Ki-woo just barely manages to keep a lid on his awe the first time the Parks’ formidable housekeeper, Moon-gwang (Lee Jung Eun), ushers him inside. Designed and formerly inhabited by a famous architect, the house is a masterwork of real-estate pornography with its beige walls, marble floors and vast, cavernous spaces.

But it is also a warren of secrets, full of telling details that Bong, a superb storyteller and a master of camera movement, unwraps with elegance and economy. (The cinematography is by Hong Kyung Pyo.) He calls your attention to the toy arrows fired by Da-hye’s younger brother, Da-song (Jung Hyeon Jun), and also to a framed magazine article about her father, Dong-ik (Lee Sun Kyun), a millionaire tech titan. But no one embodies the family’s glossy pretensions more nakedly than Dong-ik’s wife, Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo Jeong), whether she’s idly stroking one of the family’s three dogs or peppering her everyday speech with English affectations.

Yeon-kyo’s breezy entitlement hides a naive, nervous streak, and Cho’s performance suggests just how gullible and vulnerable the very rich can be behind their high-tech security systems. When Yeon-kyo lets drop that her mischief-making young son is in need of an art tutor, Ki-woo, thinking fast, suggests a distant acquaintance for the job — and, within days, has succeeded in installing his sister in the house as well. Ki-jung, the most intuitive grifter in a family full of them, shows up with a coolly professional demeanor and a mouth full of therapeutic gobbledygook. (She got it all from Google, she later announces to her family’s amusement.)

The Kims enjoy their sudden boost in income, but their ambitions — and the dramatic stakes — only escalate from there. I wouldn’t dream of disclosing the stunning, multilayered surprises that await you in “Parasite,” though it gives away nothing to note that it’s about two families on warring sides of the class divide. Certainly it says nothing about the dexterity with which Bong shuffles tones, moods and genres, or the Hitchcockian precision with which he and his co-writer, Han Jin Won, have booby-trapped their narrative. Taking cues from classics of domestic intrigue such as Kim Ki-young’s “The Housemaid” (1960) and Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” (1963), they send this domestic drama vaulting into satire, suspense, terror and full-blown tragedy.

The first hour or so of “Parasite” is simply the most dazzling movie about the joys of the con I’ve seen in years. It’s a heist thriller of the quotidian, in which no everyday object — a piece of fruit, a child’s drawing — is too trivial to be weaponized. Bong, his camera at once ecstatic and controlled, brings the pieces together with the brio of a conductor attacking a great symphony. But even as he lures us into a wicked sense of complicity with the Kims, he also suggests that they aren’t the only ones with something to hide.

As this allegory of class rage plays out, you may find yourself wondering about the exact meaning of the movie’s title. At first it seems the parasites must be the lowly Kims, who are so interdependent that they often seem less like individuals than members of a single, unified organism. (Watch the way they sometimes squat and crawl around in private, like stealthy four-legged insects — or perhaps just people accustomed to low ceilings.) But then, surely the title more truthfully describes the Parks, whose lives of extravagant luxury represent the real moral and financial scourge in a ruthless late-capitalist society.

Yet Bong refuses the crutch of an easy target. He peels back the layers of privilege to expose the tremendous sadness and patriarchal cruelty of the Park household, where Yeon-kyo lives in fear of her husband and instinctively prioritizes her son’s needs over her daughter’s. The Kims are a model of functionality and egalitarianism by comparison, and while they may covet their employers’ prosperity, there is never any real doubt here about which is the more loving, stable family unit.

Bong has never been one for uncomplicated heroes or easy villains: Think of the sympathetic grotesques Tilda Swinton played in “Snowpiercer” and “Okja,” the dystopian eco-thrillers the director made before this film. He has always had a knack for fusing genre pleasures and liberal polemics, as he did in his brilliant 2006 monster movie, “The Host.” With their cleverly linked titles and their shared star (Song, one of Korea’s best actors), “The Host” and “Parasite” feel like natural companion pieces, right down to the haunting echoes in their respective final shots: At heart, they’re both movies about downtrodden families doing what they must to survive in a cold, indifferent world.

What distinguishes “Parasite” even within Bong’s body of work is its discipline: This is a tighter, more intimately scaled picture than “Snowpiercer” and “Okja,” and it proceeds like clockwork without ever feeling airless or mechanical. That’s a tribute to the note-perfect ensemble, especially Park So Dam, Cho Yeo Jeong and the astonishing Lee Jeong Eun as three women driven to three unique states of desperation. But it’s also a tribute to a filmmaker whose understanding of the world is as persuasive in its cruelty as it is trenchant in its humanity. “Parasite” begins in exhilaration and ends in devastation, but the triumph of the movie is that it fully lives and breathes at every moment, even when you might find yourself struggling to exhale.

Best of the 2019 Toronto Film Festival: There was ‘Parasite’ and there was everything else

L.A. Times writers Glenn Whipp and Justin Chang discuss their Toronto festival highlights including “Marriage Story,” “Knives Out,” “Uncut Gems” and “The Lighthouse.”

Sept. 13, 2019

(In Korean with English subtitles) Rating: R, for language, some violence and sexual content Running time: 2 hours, 11 minutes Playing: ArcLight Cinemas, Hollywood, and the Landmark, West Los Angeles

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Bong Joon-ho on the Themes and Crafts of His Must-See Film, Parasite

“I love this weather. A London or a Belfast kind of weather, I just love it,” writer/director Bong Joon-ho tells me on a rainy New York afternoon last week. “The strong California sunshine makes me very nervous and anxious. I don’t know why.” Well, who cares about the odd wind and the annoying, muddy puddles outside anymore? Truthfully, the prospect of talking to him about “ Parasite ,” one of the year’s biggest cinematic sensations, is slightly overwhelming to me; so to be sitting near a wet Midtown window with a gray and gloomy view the filmmaker just admitted to adore and find relaxing, is suddenly reassuring. 

A darling of critics and the winner of Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or prize, “Parasite” is already a box office stunner in its limited, soon-expanding release—it sold out every single one of its IFC Center screenings over the weekend, becoming an all-time opening weekend record-breaker for the indie theater. There is a must-see status around the film, proving that the unanimous praise and interest for it out of Telluride, Toronto and the recently concluded New York Film Festivals was no coincidence. And even bigger things might be ahead for the adventurous genre film submitted to the Academy Awards as South Korea’s official selection; victories that might reach beyond a “Best International Film” award at the Oscars. (South Korea has never been nominated in the recently-rebranded category formerly called “Best Foreign Language Film,” so even a nomination is bound to make AMPAS history.)

The director’s finest film to date, “Parasite” thematically aligns with Bong’s previous work like “ Okja ,” “ Snowpiercer ” and “Mother” that explores issues around social justice, class inequalities and capitalistic greed, with the artistic specificity and genre polish we came to expect from the filmmaker. Blending elements of satirical comedies, neorealist dramas, high-wired thrillers and unnerving horror, Bong’s latest tells the story of two families—actually, three (without giving away spoilers)—worlds apart, yet merging under one roof eventually. We first meet the Kims—a tight-knit family of four, barely making ends meet with odds jobs here and there, living in crammed quarters of a grimy corner of Seoul. Gifted scammers, the quartet speedily works its way into full-time jobs at the Park house; an idyllic architectural wonder, a rich, contemporary fortress with secrets, nested in a very different part of town. And naturally, all hell is bound to break loose. As Bong goes deeper into his examination of economic disparity and the blind, condescending entitlement of the privileged class, “Parasite” goes from funny, to unsettling, to deeply heartbreaking in segments orchestrated with the precision of a stage choreographer. 

Below is my brief chat with director Bong, on the themes and crafts of “Parasite.”

“Parasite” is very specific about its sense of space. All your movies have that exactness about the place they are set in. But “Parasite” would not have worked in any other type of house. So how did you conceive the idea of this castle-like place, with multiple layers and multiple nooks and crannies?

You know, the rich house in this film is not like the mansions you see in Hollywood films, like Tim Burton ’s “ Batman ”; Michael Keaton’s home in that film. It’s not as big, but around 60% of the story happens there. So it was very important that it felt like its own universe. And of course if you go into further detail of the house, you discover many secrets. So we really tried to construct it as this big universe. And how the characters move within that space there is also very important. Their pathways, their movements and all the [camera] angles. So even from when we were designing the space, our priority was how people would be moving and we designed it around that movement. So that movement, the blocking, is very essential to me. Maybe if some real architects in the real world watched the movie, they might find it a little strange; like, why no house has that kind of structure. Of course, you know, in the frame, it’s very beautiful. But from an objective perspective of an architect, the structure might feel a little unconventional.

Your sets were completely designed and built from zero, then? 

So the rich house, the poor house and the neighborhoods surrounding the poor house were all designed and built; we [sketched] and built all of it. None of the locations actually existed. We built the first floor of the rich house on an outdoor lot that’s used for film sets. We created the garden and we planted the trees and that was our main stage. The second floor of that house and the basement, we built in a separate sound stage.

Knowing none of it existed before; some of the intentional symmetry between the two houses makes even more sense. This is especially the case with the rectangular windows of both houses, with very different views.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. The rich house carries a very artificial sense of beauty and artificial sense of cleanliness. It’s very orderly, the backyard and the entire house. And that giant glass wall [window] basically was built in this CinemaScope ratio. We designed it like that on purpose, so that when people are sitting in the sofa and drinking whiskey, it almost feels like they’re watching a film screen. And for the poor house, the window is longer and it also gives a sense that this family has no privacy, that anyone outside can look in and sort of infiltrate their home. There is always that sense of … maybe a drop of urine could just drop on their window. And so they’re always vulnerable to the outside world.

You have said in other places that you don’t do rehearsals with your actors. But on the other hand, all your films are meticulously choreographed, with complex character movements you have mentioned moments ago. So how do you establish that fluidity within your cast?

That kind of very technical movements, I do it. But nothing on an emotional level, all just very mechanical, If there is some complicated camera movement or Steadicam kind of a thing, of course I do. But it’s all very technical around checking the positions. So when I say I don’t do rehearsals, I mean I don’t set up the entire emotion of the scene in terms of performance. With the actual physical aspect of filming, with complicated shots, definitely. When actors act together for the first time, it can be quite awkward because they don’t know, they haven’t figured out the exact chemistry yet. They haven’t calculated how they will all fit together. And so sometimes it feels a little clumsy, little hectic and confusing. But that’s the kind of feeling that I like. I just shoot it and sometimes it feels even more realistic and more human. Because I sometimes discover those interesting elements on the first take, I always hope that I will be able to catch it. So it’s not that I don’t do rehearsals, I just shoot the rehearsals.

Thematically, “Parasite” aligns with your previous work, like “Snowpiercer” and even “Okja.” You explore issues around class, the clash of “upstairs and downstairs,” and capitalistic systems. You’re conscious of these dynamics in Korean society and elsewhere.

I may be more sensitive, you know, as an artist, but I think all of us, we feel class 24 hours. We just try hard to ignore it because it makes us uncomfortable. So for example, when we’re introduced to someone at a party and we shake hands, unconsciously we think about what clothes they are wearing. Are they holding an expensive bag? Are they using an old iPhone or a new one with those three lenses? So we feel around us all the time and I think, you know, we have this particular sense where we can determine whether someone is middle class, upper-middle or lower class in just a few seconds. It’s just that we never talk about it out in the open. Even when we’re, you know, hugging someone, we inevitably smell them. But it’s just that we never talk about it because it’s rude. It’s not as if I’m trying to explore class as a social economic issue with a giant flag I’m waving. But I think this film is talking about something that we all feel and we all are aware of, but we just never talk about. That’s what it is showing on the big screen.

Though it seems this is a topic that’s also top of mind for other South Korean filmmakers. Last year, there was Lee Chang-dong ’s “ Burning .” I found it interesting that food is used as a subtle signifier of class in both movies. In “Burning,” there is the “cooking pasta while listening to music” reference. In “Parasite,” an expensive cut of sirloin steak gets added to a simple noodle dish, translated as ram-don in the film.

[Laughs] You know, in the English subtitle, it’s named ram-don, like a mixture of Ramen and Udon. So it was impossible to translate. But the original word we have is jjapaguri , which is a combination of two brand names. They’re both instant noodles, one black bean, one spicy seafood. It’s something that lower and middle class people eat. It’s very cheap, just a cheap instant noodle dish, something that everyday people just invented. And that dish is very popular with children. It’s something that kids love—and even rich kids are just kids in the end. But the mom, she just adds the rich topping on it with the sirloin. No one really eats it that way. But after the film was released, people had posted recipes and were talking about adding sirloin to a noodle dish.

I should look those up. And speaking of recipes, there’s now a new beer named after you. 

[Laughs] Bong Joon-HOP! People at the Austin Fantastic Fest, they’re very adorable people. And also in this film, you see the protagonist family drinking beer a lot. At first, we see them drinking after they folded the pizza boxes [to make money], they’re drinking the cheapest Korean beer we have. And the second time, when it’s after they’ve infiltrated the rich family and they’re all employed. [In that scene], they’re actually drinking a very expensive beer. So that’s something Korean audiences caught.

You’re going to be in the thick of the awards season in the upcoming months. I am wondering what you make of this circuit and the road ahead till the Oscars.

This is my first time participating in such an extensive campaign. So it all feels very new and I find it very fun as well. But with the Oscars, you know, there’s so many people who have to vote. The campaign is also very long. With Cannes and some of the domestic Korean awards, it’s usually just around a dozen jury members who choose the films. But this is a much larger system. So physically, it’s been a little tiring, but I think, you know, another level of meaning is attached to this.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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Korean export Parasite may be the class-conscious thriller of the year

Maybe you can’t actually eat the rich. But you can steal their lunch, and their life: That’s the essential premise of Bong Joon-ho ’s Parasite , a serrating, brilliantly stylized portrait of class and fate and family in modern-day Korea.

The Kims — Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song), his wife Chung-sook (Hye-jin Jang), their son Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi), and daughter Ki-jung (So-dam Park) — live dead-broke but cheerful in a dingy basement apartment in Seoul, scuttling up into ceiling corners to tap free Wi-Fi and pre-assembling pizza boxes for spare change.

Ki-woo doesn’t seem to be in any huge rush toward gainful employment, but he catches a lucky break when an old friend hands down his job as an English tutor for a teenage girl from a wealthy family. No actual tutoring experience, or even a college degree? That’s easy enough for Ki-jung to fix with a little creative Photoshop. And the Parks, or at least their fussy, fluttery young matriarch, Yeon-keo (Yeo-jeong Jo), are a very credulous people.

First they welcome Ki-woo into their gorgeous box-modern home; then, when Yeon-keo mentions that her youngest could use another art instructor, the new tutor is happy to share his casual, completely unbiased advice: There’s a girl he’s heard great things about — just a distant acquaintance who goes by Jessica and happens, unbeknown to the Parks, to share his home and approximately 50 percent of his DNA.

It’s not long before the entire family has infiltrated the Park household and stealthily filled every corner of their personal service economy: cooking, driving, caring for their children. But what Bong ( Snowpiercer , The Host ) chooses to do once he’s laid down the narrative kindling isn’t pour on gasoline. Instead he tends to his little fires carefully, revealing the full messy humanity of his characters bit by bit — all the half-buried flaws, quirks, and aspirations that live somewhere between the obvious signposts of good guys (poor) and bad (rich).

What the story doesn’t seem particularly interested in, for all its class consciousness and social currency — and the glut of prestige festival prizes , including the Palme d’Or , already on the mantel — is drawing any clean, easy lines between outer wealth and inner worth. Bong has more than enough to say about the disconnect between money and meritocracy, the vagaries of family, and the things people do when the social contract is suddenly stripped away. But he does it with so much wit and heart that it almost feels like a party trick: swirling big-swing provocations into the creamy peanut butter of crowd-pleasing entertainment.

That’s what makes its final moments so unsettling, and so unforgettable. If the movie is a Rorschach of who you identify as parasite and host, it’s a test you’re just as likely to fail; a filmgoing experience that refuses to fit into any box, and forces viewers to breathe the dangerous air outside of it too. A–

( Parasite premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and will be in select theaters beginning Oct. 11.)

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The ferocious, chilling Parasite is an essential thrill ride about social inequality

Snowpiercer and The Host director Bong Joon-ho reaches the peak of his game with a new must-see horror masterpiece.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The upstairs-downstairs construct — in which the literal levels of a house demarcate the differences between the wealthy and those who serve them — has long worked as shorthand for class division and struggle. (See: every British period drama, ever.) The “upstairs” people are comfortable, happy, and prefer to be oblivious to what’s going on “downstairs” with the hired help, who do their work and live their lives invisibly alongside.

In Parasite , Korean horror master Bong Joon-Ho ( The Host , Snowpiercer ) draws on that visual metaphor for a twisty, pummeling thriller that’s among his best work. It’s thematically familiar territory for Bong; his films always pair heart-stopping and imaginative terror with humor and a healthy dose of raging at inequality. Parasite feels in many ways like the culmination.

That’s partly because Bong is working at the top of his game, constructing with his cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo a world where drastic shifts occur between the insides of houses that don’t just signify changing living conditions but the interior state of the inhabitants. Everything on these characters’ insides shows up outside, too — and that may be why their world is in chaos.

Parasite is a tale of two families in a symbiotic relationship

It’s not wise to say too much about the plot of Parasite , because its jarring left turns are what make it so pointedly critical of the vast inequalities in its world and, perhaps more importantly, the inability of the haves to recognize how their lives affect the have-nots.

But it starts out like a satirical story of grifters — specifically, the Kim family, who aren’t poverty-stricken yet but are definitely headed that way. The four of them, two parents and two university-aged children who can’t possibly afford university, live in a dingy apartment that’s half below-ground. They have to peer out their high windows to see what’s happening on the sidewalk directly outside. The Kims scrape to make ends meet, folding pizza boxes to earn a little cash and running around the apartment chasing wifi signals from the coffeeshop next door. When the fumigator comes by to spray the streets, they open their windows, hoping to kill some of the vermin that live in there with them.

One day, son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) is given a great opportunity: His friend is leaving a job tutoring a wealthy teenaged girl in English and would like to recommend Ki-woo in his place. Ki-woo agrees, introduces himself to the Park family as “Kevin,” and starts tutoring Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), who promptly falls in love with him.

Through some fortuitous events and also some mild-to-moderate lying, Ki-woo soon succeeds in getting the Parks to hire the rest of his family members, too — his sister (Park So-dam) as an art tutor to Da-hye’s younger brother, his father (Song Kang-ho) as chauffeur to the wealthy entrepreneur father, and his mother (Jang Hye-jin) as housekeeper — all without the Parks quite realizing they’ve hired an entire family. Everyone seems happy. Everything is good in the world.

Until it all goes very, very sideways.

Parasite is an unpredictable, thought-provoking masterpiece about inequality

Bong’s films are always hilarious and farcical, almost slapstick and then violent. There are no real heroes but few true villains; people do ignoble things to one another but you kind of get the reason why. Everyone in a Bong Joon-ho film is, at least to some degree, the victim of his or her circumstances. They’re cogs in a much, much larger machine — or to put it another way, just creatures living in an ecosystem they cannot possibly control.

Parasite feels like the movie the director has been training to make throughout his entire career. It’s a movie about the ugly, brutal hilarity of modern life, where some people get to live out in the open and others are forced into the shadows, but everyone’s sucking one another’s life blood. The fun in unraveling Parasite is figuring out just who the title is about and why they’re the parasite here. (It seems not entirely coincidental that one of Bong’s earlier breakout hits was the fabulous 2006 monster movie The Host .)

The movie serves up a rich stew of caustic wit and catastrophe, and watching the spaces the characters move through is a key to making it all work, from the dingy dirt of the Kims’ half-basement home to the Parks’ spacious and airy house, built as a work of art by a famous architect. The contrast is a stark reminder to the Kims of what they could have and how they assume it would make them feel if they did.

And yet Bong and co-writer Han Jin-won don’t fall into stereotypes of haves and have-nots , either. This is not a movie about how rich people are actually miserable. Whether it’s because of their surroundings or just a coincidence, the Parks seem to live an untroubled and happy existence; their crime is in being so comfortable that they can’t really imagine anyone is struggling. And the Kims are not made saints by their poverty, either.

Combine those characters with an unpredictable plot and Parasite emerges as a masterpiece. It’s also an exemplary specimen of a kind of movie that’s proliferated this year — movies like Knives Out and Ready or Not and Joker and many, many others , each about the mounting gap between the rich and the rest of the world. It’s been a marked trend, and Parasite is one of the finest, probably because Bong knows his way around a visual metaphor (and as the movie goes on, it’s a lot more than just the houses). No wonder the movie won the Palme d’or at Cannes in May .

And while it’s hugely entertaining, Parasite is also thought-provoking. By the time the catharsis arrives, you think you’re at the end of the film, but a coda adds a new wrinkle to the whole thing. If a parasite eventually takes over its host, then what will happen to a world where everyone, in some way, is a parasite for someone else?

Parasite premiered at Cannes in May and played at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, among others. It opens in theaters on October 11.

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‘Parasite' | Anatomy of a Scene

The director bong joon ho narrates a sequence from his film..

“Hello, this is Bong Joon Ho, director of ‘Parasite.’ This is the story about infiltration. One family infiltrates to other family. This is in the middle of that process. —that kind of moment.” “Simply speaking, it’s just something like ‘Mission: Impossible,’ the TV series when I was a little kid. I was a huge fan. And this some kind of nerdy family version of ‘Mission: Impossible.’” “In this moment for the young son, he is kind of manipulator. He controls everything. And he has a plan. When they rehearse, it looks like a kind of filmmaking. It is like the son is director, the father is the actor.” “I intentionally shoot those shots very quickly and some very spontaneous reaction and sudden, small, improvised. And something happened very naturally. Rolling the camera, that kind of momentary feeling is very important.”

By Manohla Dargis

Midway through the brilliant and deeply unsettling “Parasite,” a destitute man voices empathy for a family that has shown him none. “They’re rich but still nice,” he says, aglow with good will. His wife has her doubts. “They’re nice because they’re rich,” she counters. With their two adult children, they have insinuated themselves into the lives of their pampered counterparts. It’s all going so very well until their worlds spectacularly collide, erupting with annihilating force. Comedy turns to tragedy and smiles twist into grimaces as the real world splatters across the manicured lawn.

The story takes place in South Korea but could easily unfold in Los Angeles or London. The director Bong Joon Ho ( “Okja” ) creates specific spaces and faces — outer seamlessly meets inner here — that are in service to universal ideas about human dignity, class, life itself. With its open plan and geometric shapes, the modernist home that becomes the movie’s stage (and its house of horrors) looks as familiar as the cover of a shelter magazine. It’s the kind of clean, bright space that once expressed faith and optimism about the world but now whispers big-ticket taste and privilege.

“Space and light and order,” Le Corbusier said, are as necessary as “bread or a place to sleep.” That’s a good way of telegraphing the larger catastrophe represented by the cramped, gloomy and altogether disordered basement apartment where Kim Ki-taek (the great Song Kang Ho) benignly reigns. A sedentary lump (he looks as if he’s taken root), Ki-taek doesn’t have a lot obviously going for him. But he has a home and the affection of his wife and children, and together they squeeze out a meager living assembling pizza boxes for a delivery company. They’re lousy at it, but that scarcely matters as much as the petty humiliations that come with even the humblest job.

The Kims’ fortunes change after the son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo Shik), lands a lucrative job as an English-language tutor for the teenage daughter, Da-hye (Jung Ziso), of the wealthy Park family. The moment that he walks up the quiet, eerily depopulated street looking for the Park house it’s obvious we’re not idling in the lower depths anymore. Ki-woo crosses the threshold into another world, one of cultivated sensitivities and warmly polished surfaces that are at once signifiers of bourgeois success and blunt reproaches to his own family’s deprivation. For him, the house looks like a dream, one that his younger sister and parents soon join by taking other jobs in the Park home.

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Parasite Is the Best Movie of the Year So Far

Bong joon-ho’s subversive, funny, genre-bending thriller is the south korean us ..

The protean South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho doesn’t make what you’d call genre films, even if his past films have included such apparently familiar modes of cinematic expression as a small-town police procedural ( Memories of Murder ), a kaiju- style monster movie ( The Host ), a dystopian sci-fi adventure ( Snowpiercer ), and a fable about animal rights ( Okja ). Nor would it be quite right to say that Bong’s movies parody the notion of genre, or deconstruct it, or pay pastiche-style homage to one or more beloved works of the past. Rather, what sets Bong apart from every other working director I can think of is his films’ perplexing ability to morph smoothly, within one film and sometimes one scene, from one recognizable cinematic style to another, shedding genres as they lose their usefulness like a snake shimmying out of its skin.

The analogy from the natural world isn’t accidental. Bong’s ever-shifting style can have an organic quality, as if his films were grown rather than made, even though his plots are often intricately structured. He’s said that he storyboards each scene obsessively, but that once the set is built and the camera placements chosen, he gives the actors ample room to improvise and try new things during the shoot. This mixture of methods could account for his films’ simultaneous sense of order and aliveness. Like Alfred Hitchcock, he’s a master manipulator of the audience’s physiological response system, able to play on our natural reserves of pity, fear, anxiety, and empathy while raising and lowering our heartrates at will. But his characters are never mere symbols or pieces on a game board. It’s impossible to imagine him calling his actors “cattle,” as Hitchcock did, or treating his characters’ lives and deaths with the same chilly remove.

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Parasite , maybe the best film Bong has yet made, begins as a social-realist drama about a poor family struggling to find work in modern-day Seoul. By the end of its brisk two hours and 11 minutes, it will have cycled through black comedy, social satire, suspense, and slapstick. All the while, the audience’s understanding of and attachment to the central characters has continued to deepen so that their final fate strikes us with the force of tragedy. Parasite also functions as a savage commentary on economic inequality and the violence inflicted by capitalism, but it approaches these themes with such sly wit that it never feels like an “issue movie.”

The cramped semi-basement apartment where we first meet the Kims tells us all we need to know about their circumstances. This family of four live on top of each other amid a welter of packaged food containers, skittering insects, and laundry hung up to dry. The bathroom is nothing but an open toilet on a high ledge. The only way to get a Wi-Fi signal is to roam through the apartment with phone held high, hoping to tap into the network of a neighbor. To make money, the Kims fold delivery boxes for a nearby pizza chain, but even that job is always on the verge of being taken away. As a manager for the franchise makes clear, if they make mistakes or work too slowly, there’s always someone who can fold boxes better and faster.

One day the Kims’ son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), a smart high school graduate who hasn’t had the advantage of a college education, gets referred by a friend to work as an English tutor for the daughter of a rich family, the Parks. On his first visit to the Parks’ house—a sleek, cavernous compound designed by a famous architect—Ki-woo sees an opening for his family’s life to change, and the Kims begin to hatch a plan to infiltrate the household by making themselves indispensable to it. (The other Kims are played, all excellently, by Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, and longtime Bong collaborator Song Kang-ho.) Before long, the entire Kim family is living off the Parks in the symbiotic relationship suggested by the movie’s title—but who is parasitic on whom exactly, given that the hapless upper-class family is as dependent on the Parks’ labor as the Parks are on their cash?

The first hour of Parasite has the forward-barreling energy of a delirious heist comedy as the Kims work together to engineer their takeover of the wealthy family’s home and fortune. After a wild party scene at the midway point—while the Parks are away on a camping trip, the Kims gather in their living room to drink their liquor and raid their well-stocked fridge—a shocking twist places both families in a different light and forces the Kims to confront an entirely new set of practical and ethical problems.

The second half of the movie opens up in scope, beginning with a spectacularly staged natural disaster that leaves the Kims’ run-down alley (according to the director, a set built in a water tank) neck-deep in black sewage water. Soon after, the secrets both families have been hiding, plus other secrets previously unknown to them both, threaten to come to light in a cataclysm of long-deferred and thrillingly orchestrated violence.

That’s about all you should know about Parasite going in, the better to appreciate Bong’s economy in revealing, detail by detail, exactly what he wants you to know when he wants you know it. This isn’t the kind of class allegory that sets up one group of characters as an easy foil for the other. As oblivious and exploitative as the overprivileged Parks can be, they’re also a real family with desires and dysfunctions all their own. Bong is especially acute at dissecting the patriarchal dynamics at work in the rich family, where the mother’s sheltered existence and financial dependence on her tech-tycoon husband make her an easy target for scammers like the Kims. The critique of capitalism that emerges over the course of Parasite ’s story is broad, deep, and, as the movie ends, painfully unresolved. There’s no turnabout-is-fair-play satisfaction to be found in the Kim family’s reversal of fortune, only the exposure of a system that pits families and individuals against each other in a pitiless zero-sum competition for dwindling resources.

Like several earlier Bong Joon-ho films ( The Host , Snowpiercer, Okja ), Parasite works on one level as an ecological allegory. The Parks’ elegant, expensively maintained home and garden is a kind of aspirational Eden, but one whose luxury comes at immense hidden cost. With its tale of two interdependent but far from equal families, each with one son and one daughter, Parasite also can’t help but recall a great American film from earlier this year, though it was in production long before Jordan Peele’s Us was released. (It was first shown in May at Cannes, where it won the Palme d’Or , making Bong the first Korean director to win the festival’s top prize.) The theme of the double, so intelligently deconstructed in Us (where the family of “evil twins” turns out to be as worthy of our sympathy as the regular family they seek out and stalk), here undergoes a further transformation. By the end of Parasite , the audience is uncomfortably aware of our complicity with an economic system that allows such deep class divisions to rule our lives and structure our everyday interactions. Our hearts break for the Kims and the Parks—but not before Bong puts those hearts through their paces with a pulse-pounding action finale.

Film Review: ‘Parasite’

Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho is on excoriating form in his exceptional pitch-black tragicomedy about social inequality in modern Korea.

By Jessica Kiang

Jessica Kiang

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A laugh turns into a snarl which gets stuck in the throat like a sob — or an arrow through the neck — in Bong Joon-ho ‘s latest wild, wild ride, “ Parasite .” On paper, that might not sound so very different from the experience of watching Bong’s “Snowpiercer,” “Memories of Murder” “The Host” or “Okja.” The Korean trickster god is above all known for his uncategorizable movie melées which tumble bloodily down the genre stairs hitting every step — comedy, horror, drama, social commentary, slasher, creature feature, murder mystery, manifesto for vegetarianism — on the way. But while “Parasite” certainly cycles through more than half that list, the laugh is darker, the snarl more vicious and the sob more despairing than we’ve ever had from him before. Bong is back and on brilliant form, but he is unmistakably, roaringly furious, and it registers because the target is so deserving, so enormous, so 2019 : “Parasite” is a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage.

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It doesn’t start off that way. With typical feint-and-parry dexterity, the film begins as a so-close-it’s-almost-self-conscious Korean reworking of last year’s Palme d’Or winner “Shoplifters.” Here too we have a ramshackle but loving family driven to dubious extremes by poverty-stricken circumstance, and a rumpled patriarch (Song Kang-ho) who bursts amusingly with pride at even the most marginal of his kids’ achievements. “Does Oxford have a course in forgery?” he asks admiringly, looking at the fake qualification his daughter Ki-Jung (Park So-dam) has comped together for her brother Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik).

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From their squalid “semi-basement” (a couple of dank rooms with a small strip of window against which drunken men are given to urinating) all four members of this family, including their ex-champion shot-putter mother Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin) struggle to find menial gig-economy jobs and an unlocked wifi signal. But then Ki-woo is offered the chance to replace a friend as the tutor for Da-hye (Jung Ziso), daughter of the wealthy Mr Park (Lee Sun-kyun).

Suddenly Ki-woo’s days of folding pizza boxes for peanuts are behind him, and instead he gets to hang out with his lovestruck student and her daintily pretty, naive mother Yeon-kyo (Cho Yo-Jeong) in the Parks’ spacious architect-designed home. When it turns out Da-hye’s hyperactive, “Indian”-obsessed little brother Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun) needs an art tutor, Ki-woo spots another opportunity and recommends his sister — in disguise as college acquaintance “Jessica.” And so one more cuckoo settles into this luxuriously appointed nest.

Although this is the least loopy title from Bong in a while — there’s no room for a cartoonishly broad, heavily dentured Tilda Swinton performance, for example — the first act bounces by with a devil-may-care gait as the scam expands, things start to look up for the family and while they’ve been roguish, no one has done anything so very unforgivable yet. But even with proceedings at their jauntiest, the sincere classical score from Jung Jae-il and the restraint of the cinematography by Hong Kyung-po (who also shot last year’s Korean masterpiece, “Burning”) give “Parasite” a sheen of brushed-steel seriousness.

This is the most formally polished work we’ve seen from Bong: As opposed to the herky-jerk genre-hopping of “The Host,” here the story elides so seamlessly from one mood to the next that the joins are near-impossible to find, like those of the poured-concrete walls of the Parks’ modernist dream home. Production designer Lee Ha-jun’s conception of the two contrasting residences, one a grotty subterranean hovel, the other a clean-lined work of livable art on a gated suburban hillock fringed to perfect privacy with dense trees and shrubs, is a masterful example of evoking class difference through space and light. Those are commodities that apparently only the rich deserve.

It would have been easy for Bong and co-writer Han Jin-won to have made the privileged Parks overtly detestable, but time and again it is asserted just how nice they are. “If I was rich,” sighs Chung-sook drunkenly, “I would be nice too. Money is an iron; it smoothes out all the wrinkles.” And certainly, Mr. and Mrs. Park live a largely uncreased life, save for the slightest wrinkling of the nose when an unpleasant odor — perhaps the tang of poverty itself — assails them. But for every gut-punch moment of blithe, enraging entitlement on their part, there’s an equally horrible instance of selfishness or spite from their less moneyed counterparts: It takes a watchmaker’s skill to keep the pendulum of our sympathies swinging back and forth between the grasping desperation of the poor and the idle hatefulness of the rich.

Tiny details, like the mention of a Taiwanese cake shop or the flickering of a hall lamp, all pay off in this most tightly plotted of Bong’s films, building to a conclusion that is devastating and yet satisfying as an accretion of a thousand of those little moments. So as plans go awry, quasi-Gothic revelations occur and things get pretty grisly, we’ve been so wholly worked into Bong’s cleverly concealed sympathies that we might shock ourselves by feeling a sense of cathartic rightness at a moment of clearly wrongheaded violence.

The catharsis does not last long, though. As ferocious as this brilliant, caustic film is, with its flawless craft and humor — so dark it’s like it, too, was bred in a basement and never saw the sun — it also rumbles constantly with a bleak growl at just how little all this high drama can actually ever matter, an impression reinforced by Hong’s dispassionate, almost sardonically pristine camera. Even this grand battle royale between the haves and have-nots will only ever be a squabble at the feet of an indifferent god, or worse still, a sideshow indulged to distract its participants from the real enemy, which is a system that creates and nourishes such divides in the first place. This is the sad little truth evoked in the film’s unexpectedly moving final moments: Eat the rich, by all means, fill your bellies, but pretty soon you’ll be hungry again, and you will still be poor.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 21, 2019. Running time: 131 MIN. (Original title: "Gisaenchung")

• Production: (South Korea) A CJ Entertainment presentation of a Barunson E&A production. (International Sales: CJ Entertainment, Seoul.) Producers: Jang Young-hwan, Kwak Sin-ae, Moon Yang-kwon. Executive producer: Miky Lee. Co-executive producer: Heo Min-heoi
• Crew: Director: Bong Joon-ho. Screenplay: Bong, Han Jin-won. Camera (color, widescreen): Hong Kyung-pyo. Editor: Yang Jinmo. Music: Jung Jae-il.
• With: Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Lee Sun-kyun, Park So-dam, Cho Yeo-jeong, Lee Jung-eun, Chang Hyae-jin, Jung Ziso, Jung Hyeon-jun. (Korean dialogue)

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'parasite'.

Bob Mondello

Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-ho has made a South Korean social satire that's also a genre-bending Palme d'Or-winning thriller of class struggle.

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‘parasite’ (‘gisaengchung’): film review | cannes 2019.

Korean creature-feature maestro Bong Joon-ho returns to Cannes with 'Parasite,' a dark family farce where the only monsters are human.

By Stephen Dalton

Stephen Dalton

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Parasite, starring Lee Sun-kyun (left) and Cho Yeo-jeong, takes a "microscopic" look at two families — one rich, one poor.

Returning to home turf after a run of international features, South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho launches a sustained attack on the lifestyles of the rich and shameless with his latest Cannes competition contender, Parasite . In previous genre-driven pieces like The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja , Bong tapped the juicy allegorical potential of sci-fi to critique the unjust nature of capitalism and class hierarchy. This time, he ditches the metaphorical layers and adopts a register closer to social realism, albeit spiced with dark satire and noir-ish thriller elements. Whatever the horror-movie connotations of that double-edged title, the morally flawed monsters in Parasite are entirely human. Bong calls the film “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.”

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With its focus on an impoverished family who concoct a wily scheme to boost their bleak prospects, Parasite arrives a little too soon after Hirokazu Kora-Eda’s thematically similar Japanese drama Shoplifters , which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes a year ago. Bong’s more splashy, simplistic film will likely draw unflattering parallels, but there are richer cinematic echoes in here, too. At times the plot teasingly recalls Joseph Losey’s The Servant and Pier Paolo Pasoloni’s Theorem , poison-tipped parables about cunning social outcasts staging stealth home invasions against upper-class hosts.

The Bottom Line A mostly successful detour into morally complex social realism.

Like much of Bong’s work, Parasite is cumbersomely plotted and heavy-handed in its social commentary. The largely naturalistic treatment here may also alienate some of his fantasy fanboy constituency. That said, this prickly contemporary drama still feels more coherent and tonally assured than Snowpiercer or Okja , and packs a timely punch that will resonate in our financially tough, politically polarized times. It opens May 30 in South Korea, where Bong has a consistently strong commercial track record, with more territories to follow in June. After Cannes it should also enjoy a healthy festival run, starting with Sydney on June 15. New York-based outfit Neon inked U.S. distribution rights at AFM last year.

From the opening scene, Bong sets up a stark visual contrast between the unequal social castes at play here. Disheveled patriarch Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) and his family are crammed into a sunken, cluttered, bug-infested basement apartment at the end of a shabby street on the wrong side of the tracks. Ki-taek, his wife Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) are all penniless and unemployed, unable to even hold down a lowly shared job folding cardboard pizza boxes. Without bad luck, they would have no luck at all.

But fortune favors the bold, especially when the bold are armed with flexible ethics and sharp forgery skills. Following a tip from a well-connected pal, Ki-woo lands a sweet job as a private tutor for Da-hye (Jung Ziso), the high-schooler daughter of wealthy corporate CEO Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun) and his glamorously vacant wife Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong). In contrast to Ki-taek’s family, the Parks live high above the city in an airy, spacious, pristine modernist mansion shielded by thick concrete walls. A quick-thinking opportunist, Ki-woo spots a chance of securing jobs for his entire clan with the Parks, playing on their snobbish aspirations like a virtuoso. The plan runs smoothly, even if it means callously displacing the family’s existing domestic staff.

In an unusually personal plea, Bong has requested Cannes reviewers not to reveal plot spoilers about the second act of Parasite . As it happens, there is not one big twist here but multiple small revelations and reverses, each ramping up the stakes. A deftly choreographed rainstorm sequence hammers home the impossibly wide gulf between high and low, rich and poor. Bong then makes the film’s class-war subtext concrete with a bloody struggle for survival that leaves no one holding the moral high ground.

Initially a little slow to set up its dynamic tension, Parasite peaks during its lively mid-section as a fast-paced, black-hearted, Coens-esque farce before climaxing with a chaotic orgy of vengeful violence. As ever, Bong’s bludgeoning attacks on economic injustice have more passion than nuance, while a superfluous coda about secret coded messages is a clumsy twist too far. A good 15 minutes of the pic’s generous two-hour-plus running time could be comfortably trimmed.

Nonetheless, Parasite is generally gripping and finely crafted, standing up well as Bong’s most mature state-of-the-nation statement since Memories of Murder in 2003. The performances are uniformly solid, with special credit due to the child and teen actors. Hong Kyung-pyo’s high-gloss cinematography combines lustrous candy-shop colors with kinetic precision, while Lee Ha-jun’s production design is typically superb, especially the elegantly minimalist Park family mansion, which serves as both deluxe fortress and sinister prison. Spliced into Jung Jaei-il’s dread-laden score, fragrant bouquets of classical music provide bustling comic counterpoint as well as wry commentary on the snooty cultural values being slowly eviscerated onscreen.

Production company: Barunson E&A Cast: Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Chang Hyae-jin, Park So-dam, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Jung Ziso, Lee Jung-em, Jung Hyeon-jun Director: Bong Joon-ho Screenwriters: Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won Producers: Jang Young-Hwan, Moon Yang-kwon, Kwak Sin-ae Cinematographer: Hong Kyung-pyo Editor: Yang Jinmo Music: Jung Jaei-il Art director: Lee Ha-jun Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition) Sales: CJ Entertainment

131 minutes

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10 reasons why Parasite is so excellent

1. For a certain type of person, urgency will be enough. I will attempt that here. If you read writers because you trust them, allow me to thank you – I’m flattered, truly – and then implore you: Parasite , the new film from Korean director Bong Joon-ho , is a tremendous work that might be the most pleasurable experience you have in a movie theatre this year. It’s so top-to-bottom satisfying that even being completely spoiled couldn’t ruin it – but if you can come to it cold, you’ll be floored. Don’t even watch a trailer. Trust me, and go.

2. If you must know more – there will be no spoilers – the premise is simple enough. The Kim family, underemployed and eager for any opportunity to scrape together a little more cash, aren’t having the best time of things. Kim Ki-taek, the patriarch, is an unemployed driver. Together with his wife and two children, the family does odd jobs, such as folding pizza boxes. Then, an opportunity falls into his son Ki-woo’s lap when a friend offers to recommend Ki-woo to replace him as an English tutor to the daughter of the extremely wealthy Park family. Once he settles into his posh new job, Ki-woo gets an idea: What if he can trick the Parks into hiring his entire family?

3. Bong Joon-ho makes movies that ruin other movies for you. His films disregard the boundaries of genre; their characters resist familiar archetypes. Each one – be it the monster movie The Host , the science fiction thriller Snowpiercer, or the strange drama Okja – begins with one ostensible set of rules before discarding them one at a time in a way that should be disorienting. Instead, you wonder why we bother with rules at all.

4. Parasite is a movie about illusions, which is to say, it is about class and wealth. In watching it, you’ll begin to anticipate some of its jabs, and assume the direction in which it will cut. Maybe you’ll be right, for a little while. And then you won’t be.

5. Before we continue, it’s worth underlining in red ink: This movie is funny. Wickedly so. Parasite spares no one in its criticism, it dresses down every target with withering wit and ease. It’s also tense, thoughtful, humane, and perhaps frightening. If there is a feeling that a movie can elicit from us, odds are Parasite does so.

6. Much of Parasite ’s magic comes from the clever ways it puts the wealthy in intimate proximity with the sort of poor people that aren’t supposed to interact with them. Is the Kim family cheating with their gambit to become upwardly mobile? Can the Parks even be honest people with such wealth? “Money,” as one character notes, “irons out all the wrinkles”.

7. Watching this film, I think of the professors and employers and fathers of girlfriends I have stood in front of and listened to as they compliment me on being so articulate and well-spoken. I had stepped across a threshold they did not expect someone like me to haunt, and they had sized me up, and deemed me acceptable. The part that no one ever talks about is the one where I’ve sized them up too, and decided they were suckers just waiting to hear the right author mentioned, the right album, the right headlines. But that’s okay. They’re supposed to have the power in this story, and I can let them have it.

8. Maybe if the playing field was truly level we’d all eat each other just the same.

9. Few things in Parasite are as abundantly evident as the way money rewires the brains of those who have it in excess as well as those in desperate need. Wealth buys you out of the social contract – the need to behave a certain way, to tolerate others. Poverty imposes more rules, limitations and boundaries that, if unchecked, will suffocate. There is conflict in this – the wealthy become acutely aware of the inconvenience of empathy; the poor laugh darkly at those who plan for the future. “With no plan,” Ki-taek says late in the film, “nothing can go wrong… and nothing fucking matters.”

10. At one point in the film, Ki-woo gets a gift. It’s a beautiful, decorative stone that barely fits in his family’s cramped basement apartment, prone to exposure from both fumigators and pissing drunks alike. Despite his lack of space or use for it, Ki-woo quietly holds it in high regard, keeping it with him throughout the film despite its sheer size and weight. “This stone,” Ki-woo says. “It keeps clinging to me.” And then I felt a familiar fracture in my chest for envying that same stability, playing the same song for the same set of people, knowing that the game is rigged and always will be. After a while, it becomes exhausting, envying the wealthy. And accommodating them.

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Parasite Reviews

It's a wonderfully sneaky film that, before you know it, will have worked its way right under your skin.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 30, 2024

Fundamentally, Parasite aims to make us reflect on today's society, where the gap between the rich, the middle class and the poor is increasing.The spatial construction that the film proposes is a metaphor for the cruel social pyramid system.

Full Review | Original Score: 9.5 | Aug 15, 2024

Parasite is both darkly hilarious and delightfully shocking, setting a new sky-high standard for black comedy – the style of Bong Joon-ho.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 30, 2024

“Parasite” does not put a foot wrong in either of its thematic or narrative capabilities. Via suspenseful drama, dark comedy, and an ingenious script and set design, the film offers commentary worthy of Ken Loach.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 14, 2024

It’s a tricky balancing act, much like Bong’s abrupt shifts in tone, as Parasite is arguably the best film of the year at genre manipulation...

Full Review | Jul 9, 2024

Parasite is the movie we will look back on as the movie of 2019. It crosses over to every culture because it’s simply about human beings struggling to survive in an unfair system.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2024

It is sadistic, angry and dark and has a lot to say about the system. This is the world we live in.

Full Review | Aug 11, 2023

"Parasite" has already made history for South Korea as the country's first film to win a Best Picture Academy Award. There are some moments I can't wrap my head around though, and one of them was the inclusion of Illinois State into the dialogue.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 28, 2023

Cinematography, score, editing… everything’s absolutely perfect. Nothing is placed without purpose. Not a single line of dialogue is wasted. It would be a shame if anyone fails to watch this magnificent movie just because it’s in a foreign language.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Jul 24, 2023

Radically different films such as Knives Out, Us and Joker ... have all expressed the same social criticism. Parasite is perhaps the most pointed, explicitly showing how economic inequality brings out the worst in everyone, rich and poor alike.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

Bong Joon Ho’s many-sided, dark social satire is a cunning and resourceful commentary on South Korea’s economic inequality. Why it works is the relevance of that system across societies of every nation.

Full Review | Jun 14, 2023

These tiny details underline the inherent horror, and concur with the genre-defying essence of the story...

Full Review | May 15, 2023

Parasite will move you like nothing else.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2023

It is the last good thing that has happened since the shutdown...

Full Review | Mar 1, 2023

Visually stunning and searing satire...

Full Review | Dec 7, 2022

Incredible storytelling and examination of the class structure in Korea... Strong characterisation and performances create empathy from audiences, themselves becoming parasites to the film as host. Clinging on for dear life until the thrilling conclusion.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 12, 2022

Delicate directing and immaculate production design make Parasite the masterpiece it is. Its social-study script belongs in a lab, as it comes with storytelling lessons that transcend language. Reason why it became universal. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 21, 2022

With a delicious black comedy edge, some surprising jolts of heartfelt emotion, and a violent throat punch when you’re least expecting it, “Parasite” is a movie that keeps you engaged and guessing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Here is a dark comedy from the great Bong Joon-Ho about class warfare that, depending on your mood, you may find to be a work of genius or too self-indulgent. One thing is certain, you’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 20, 2022

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a wryly detailed and superbly scripted portrait of contemporary class rage.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2022

Den of Geek

Parasite review: a riotously entertaining arthouse thriller

Bong Joon-ho’s celebrated Palme d’Or winner – which cleverly tackles class division – is now an Oscar winner, too…

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Unless you’ve been living in a secret subterranean bunker you’ll have heard of Parasite . Bong Joon-ho’s hilarious and horrifying Palme d’Or winner has dazzled audiences in the director’s native South Korea and across the world, slaying the global box office as few foreign-language films do.

Bong’s class-war banger created a perfect storm of box office success and critical acclaim in late 2019 and the tumult shows little sign of abating in 2020. A February UK theatrical release and home entertainment offerings elsewhere will doubtless put the feature in front of many more eager viewers.

Kim Ki-taek (key Bong collaborator Song Kang-ho) and his hard-up nuclear family live in a poky Seoul basement flat when his son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) hears of a golden opportunity for a stellar grift. Ki-woo’s pal Min-hyuk has been tutoring Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), the daughter of the affluent Park family, but has to give up the gig to study abroad. The two concoct a plan for Ki-woo to take over the tutoring job – despite Ki-woo being woefully under-qualified – and soon he’s ensconced in the Park household and plotting ways to set up the rest of his family with sweet jobs.

Using the kind of diligence, planning and cunning that  Blackadder ’s Baldrick could only dream of, Ki-woo’s sister Ki-jeong (Park So-dam) is set up as an art teacher for young Park Da-song, Ki-taek usurps the Park’s driver and housekeeper Moon-gwang is maneuvered aside for Kim matriarch Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin).

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In the telling of how all four Kims come to sit pretty in the Park residence without being recognised as a family of con-artist imposters, Bong and co-writer Han Jin-won show more wit and invention than many filmmakers manage for the duration of their running time but in Parasite , this is just the wild hors d’oeuvre ahead of the strangely captivating feast. The remainder of Bong’s film is packed with surprises but Moon-gwang (excellent portayed by Lee Jung-eun) is not as easily disregarded as it may seem and neither is the ostensibly ordinary, if beautifully designed, structure of the Park household.

Parasite is one of those beautiful rarities in cinema, a clever art-house title with much to say that is riotously entertaining and easily accessible. It tackles aspiration and affluence, desperation and poverty in ways in which all viewers can understand and find recognisable truths in. Neither the Parks nor the Kims are broad-brush villians or heroes and for the most part it’s easy to sympathise with both families.

Whether one has had the impossibly sad, grindingly tough experience of poverty or been lucky enough to live without financial pressure, it’s clear the former is something to escape from and the latter is a life to hold on to, if possible. There are parallels with Shoplifters , Hirokazu Koreeda’s 2018 Palme d’or winner – that’s now two consecutive wins at Cannes for films about con-artist families living in poverty made by top-notch East Asian filmmakers.

Bong has tackled class division before, with sci-fi train romp Snowpiercer (2013) offering an intriguing but less subtle take on the friction between rich and poor. He’s also gone more directly for the horror jugular with The Host (2006) and less successfully weirder with GM super-pig oddity Okja (2017). Yet Parasite is Bong’s best work to date, a fine summation of his ideas and talent.

It shares much with Jordan Peele’s Us , in that both films loosely exist in the horror space, both look at society’s major ills directly and allegorically and both surely are influenced by Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs (1991). Yet the Peele and Us comparisons are most apt on the issue of cinematic quality – for Parasite is another unmissable 2019 film, created by another director working at the top of his game who we can expect more fine work from in future.

Parasite is in UK cinemas now.

Review: 'Parasite' attaches to your soul with a thought-provoking tale of social inequality

“Parasite” sounds like an unnerving horror movie about unwanted invaders, but that’s just one aspect that completely works in this socially conscious delight. 

One of the most well-rounded movies you’ll see this year, the South Korean film-fest favorite  (★★★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expanding throughout October) also balances black comedy, biting social satire, human drama and thriller twistiness for a refreshing effort that's familiar enough in its themes to be extraordinarily inviting. The latest excellent effort for writer/director Bong Joon-ho (“The Host,” “Okja”) is a more entertaining version of “Roma,” an Oscar-ready , slice-of-life foreign film that challenges its audience to look inward.

Mashing up a variety of genres, “Parasite” is at its heart a morality tale centering on two disparate families: the poor Kims and the well-to-do Parks. With the shiftless Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) as their patriarch, the unemployed Kim clan live in squalor: Their apartment is a dingy, claustrophobic basement dwelling (with the most interesting view being a frequently urinating vagrant); family members steal wi-fi from the coffee shop, and they fold pizza boxes as their main source of income.

Cannes Film Festival: 'Parasite' becomes the first Korean film to win Palme d'Or

Oscar watch: These 6 movies are already the talk of awards season

While poor, they also prove to be a bunch of desperate, scheming grifters when the chance arises. Siblings Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik and Ki-jung (Park So-dam) can’t pass university entrance exams but they get an A-plus in charisma: With fake diploma in hand, Ki-woo is recommended by a friend to the wealthy Parks as an English tutor for their teenage daughter (Jung Ziso). He charms the girl’s flighty mom Yeon-kyo (Jo Yeo-jeong) and then gets his sister installed as an art teacher for the Parks’ young son (Jung Hyun-jun).

The Kims’ underhanded shenanigans – and parasitic tendencies – continue as Ki-taek takes over as the driver for workaholic Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun) and conniving Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) becomes the Parks’ live-in housekeeper after ousting longtime employee Moon-gwang (Lee Jeong-eun) by using a peach allergy against her. 

Much of the film's first act is played for dark humor until a major shoe drops for the Kims one stormy night when they're partying at the palatial estate while the Parks are off on a birthday weekend getaway. Suddenly, a somewhat breezy story takes a sinister turn, and things get vicious and violent but also downright heartbreaking.

The movie is expertly paced with its reveals, never falls apart (even when it descends into bloody chaos) and also features outstanding acting performances, especially from Song. His Ki-taek is a failed businessman yet still has some pride, and the actor sells the character’s quiet seething as Mr. Park puts him in his place with withering comments. And while they don’t always outwardly show it, there is a close love among the Kims, which gets tragically tested over the course of the film.

Like Bong’s similarly themed “Snowpiercer,” class warfare is a major theme of “Parasite,” as the greedy have-nots worm their way into the lives of the haves – and indeed make that existence their own for a time. But the movie also leans into the cautionary side, that it all can be horrifyingly washed away in an instant.

“Parasite” doesn’t villainize its ne’er-do-wells or heroize its victims – other than one bright Morse-coding boy, the Parks are a rather clueless bunch who can’t really relate to the travails of the Kims. Amid the black comedy, there’s a lesson to be had about maybe not loving your neighbor but at least understanding them in a landscape chock-full of inequity, and in that vein “Parasite” attaches to you and doesn’t let go.

Parasite Movie Analysis, Synopsis and Ending Explained (Video Essay)

P arasite director Bong Joon-ho’s insightful and engaging comedy/thriller became one of the most talked-about films of the year and set a new precedent for the mark a South Korean movie can leave on United States’ movie-going audiences. The film is packed with social commentary, thrilling moments, and plenty of meaty writing worthy of a full ‘ Parasite movie analysis’.

Watch: Parasite Explained in 15 Story Beats

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Parasite Movie Synopsis - what is Parasite about

Parasite synopsis: pulling off the con.

What is Parasite about? The first half of Parasite plays out largely as a comedy-drama with a compelling narrative and thought-provoking themes. We’ll be taking a look at all of the ingredients to made Parasite one of the best films of 2019 and one of the best South Korean films ever made , but first, let’s get started with a Parasite synopsis.

The Kim family lives in a semi-basement and struggles to keep food on the table. They take on odd jobs for cash like folding pizza boxes, and they rely on unprotected wi-fi networks and street-cleaning pesticides to keep their home insect-free.

Parasite movie synopsis  •  street-cleaning pesticides

Ki-woo, the son, is gifted a scholar’s stone or suseok by a friend and given a recommendation for a tutoring job with a wealthy family. Ki-woo and his sister Ki-jung forge credentials for the job, and thus begins the long-con that sees each member of the Kim family infiltrating the upper-class Park family one-by-one. There are plenty of examples of subtle foreshadowing all throughout this opening act that circle back around by the end of the film.

Parasite meaning conveyed in screenplay excerpt

If you are interested in reading through the rest of the script, you can find it below. And, if you would like a deep-dive into the inner workings of the screenplay, be sure to read our Parasite script teardown.

Full Script PDF Download

Ki-jung begins working for the parks under the guise of an art-therapy teacher. Ki-taek, the father, begins working as the Park family chauffeur after the Kims have removed their previous chauffeur from his position, and similarly Chung-sook, the mother, replaces Moon-gwang, the housekeeper who has served the home longer than the Park’s have even lived there. Chung-sook is framed as deceiving the family by hiding a dangerous illness. The real deception is carried out by the Kims, and it works flawlessly.

Ki-taek with the scholar’s stone

The contrast in appearance between the Kims’ semi-basement home and the lavish home of the Park family is impossible to miss. The brilliant set dressing of Parasite combined with the striking architectural-design choices perfectly reinforce the themes of the film, but more on the themes after we finish our Parasite summary.

For some Parasite movie analysis straight from the auteur himself, check out this scene breakdown from Bong Joon-ho . Alongside actor Choi Woo-sik, he explains the significance of production design elements from the beginning of the film, such as the cultural context of scholar’s stones in South Korea and the idea of distant hope conveyed by the semi-basement window.

What is Parasite about? Parasite analysis straight from the director

Once the entire Kim family is employed in the Park household, the lower-class con-artists begin to assume more and more of this fabricated identity of wealth. They take the affluent home as their own while the Parks are away… and that’s when Moon-gwang shows back up and everything changes. Let’s shift gears from a Parasite summary to a Parasite movie analysis.

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What is Parasite About?

Parasite analysis: navigating the shift.

At its exact mid-point, Parasite undergoes a massive tonal shift. In our Parasite movie analysis video, this mid-point scene was the focus.

Be sure to watch our video essay on the scene for more detail and deeper Parasite analysis.

Parasite Genre Shift  •  Subscribe on YouTube

A tonal shift this extreme could easily take viewers out of the film or feel like a jumping-the-shark moment, but in the hands of Bong Joon-ho, this shift is portrayed in a way that not only feels effortless but greatly enhances each half of the film that preceded and follows it.

What is Parasite about? This excerpt reveals the script’s major plot twist

Moon-Gwang’s return to the house and eventual reveal of the secret basement keeps us on the edges of our seats as viewers and seamlessly blends from the drama/comedy centered first half into the thriller/tragedy centered latter half. Bong Joon-ho displays a mastery over genres and tones with this mid-point shift.

Did You Know?

Lee Jeong-eun, who plays Moon-Gwang the housekeeper, also provided the vocalization for Okja the super pig in Bong Joon-ho’s previous film.

Parasite synopsis

Parasite ending: orchestrating chaos.

Following the film’s major twist, Parasite continues in a far darker tone until it’s ending. In our Parasite movie analysis, we found that although the tone and style change, the themes at play remain consistent from the first half to the second half, and continue to be developed further as the film progresses.

Parasite’s final scene, in case you want a refresher on the chaos

For additional insights into director Bong Joon-ho’s creative process, listen to him discuss his decisions and directorial style with the other 2019 DGA nominees for best director including Martin Scorsese , Quentin Tarantino , Taika Waititi , and Sam Mendes :

Parasite summary and meaning discussed by filmmakers

Power shifts from Moon-gwang and her incognito husband to the Kim family as both lower-class families fight for leverage over each other. Both parties have dark secrets, and both threaten to expose the other to the Park family, who remain above all the drama, currently unaware. The film’s social commentary on class is at its strongest in this depiction of the lower classes fighting against each other rather than against the 1% who truly hold more accountability.

Outside of the sub-basement, violence erupts, and the prophetic scholar’s stone becomes an instrument of violence. Blood is shed and deaths are cast at the birthday party of the Park family’s youngest child.

All three families at play are damaged by this explosive act of violence. The Kim family is destroyed; Ki-jung is killed, Ki-woo is left brain-damaged, and Ki-taek is forced into hiding after he snaps and acts out a classism-driven murder in the chaos of the birthday party. The metaphorical themes are presented in as literal a way as possible with the act of this stabbing.

Ki-woo questions if his class prevents him from fitting in

Parasite’s ending features a sequence of Ki-woo’s plan to work hard, buy the house under which his own father now hides, and reunite the family… but this plan is nothing but a fantasy. The real Parasite movie ending is more bleak and, unfortunately, more realistic.

To explain Parasite’ s ending, we turn to the director’s own words: “You know and I know - we all know that this kid isn't going to be able to buy that house. I just felt that frankness was right for the film, even though it's sad." The emotionally-affecting resonance of the ending is the perfect cap to the wonderfully layered social commentary spread throughout the film.

But, before we dig deeper into the social commentary, let’s take a look at how the film managed to break through to an unmatched audience size.

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Parasite 2019 Film

The spread of parasite.

Parasite has proven to be a groundbreaking achievement for South Korean movies. For years the country has been producing some of the finest films and directors in the world of cinema, but Parasite has crossed new milestones in terms of global impact.

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho became the first South Korean filmmaker to win best director at the academy awards. Has also tied the record with Walt Disney for most Oscars awarded to an individual at a single ceremony. This is especially impressive given how ethnocentric the Academy Awards often unfold, prioritizing English-language films over foreign-language films much of the time.

Parasite 2019 cleans up at the Academy Awards

Parasite was not just the first South Korean film to win the foreign language prize at the Oscars but also the first foreign language film from any country to win the overall best picture prize. Equally impressive was Parasite becoming the first South Korean movie to win the Palme d’Or, which is the top prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

Parasite makes history by winning the Palme d’Or

Parasite was the first film since Marty in 1955 to win the top prize of both The Oscars and the Cannes Film Festival. These two powerhouse awards ceremonies rarely overlap and are comprised of entirely different audiences and judges and with entirely different viewing criteria and preferences. It speaks wonders to Parasite’s accessibility that it was received so well with such widely varying viewers.

The 2012 Academy Awards:

The Artist , a French and Belgian production, won best picture at the 2012 Academy Awards but was ineligible for the best foreign language film category as it is a silent film.

It wasn’t just awards records that Parasite broke in 2019. Parasite broke a number of financial records as well, including the highest foreign film opening weekend of all time for the UK box office, and a number of records with the Indie Box Office.

The record-setting trend continued for the Parasite film. After being added Hulu’s catalogue for exclusive streaming, it became the platform’s most streamed film in both the independent and foreign film categories, reaching even more audience members and wowing them with its immaculate presentation and resonant themes.

The cultural swell around Parasite is much deserved and hopefully leads more audience members to check out Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s previous films and more South Korean cinema in general.

Parasite 2019 Meaning

Perfecting social commentary.

“What is the movie Parasite about?” has many answers. One clear way to explain the movie is: “ Parasite is about class.” Class is the primary target of social commentary within Parasite.

And every single element of the film from the scholar’s stone, to the architecture of the homes, to the very names of the families all contribute to this central theme. It’s no accident that the lower-class protagonists happen to have the single most common surname in South Korea.

Parasite 2019: The Kim family

It is one of the most effective satires in recent memory. For a quick breakdown on satire, including a segment on Parasite , here's an explainer that will answer all your questions about how satire works.

3 Types of Satire Explained  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Parasite has a lot worthy of analysis and it has a lot to say. One of the main reasons why Parasite was such a massive success around the whole world in 2019 is because of its themes and messages of classism and the wealth divide, which are truly universal. These themes cross all cultural-barriers and can speak to the 99% anywhere in the world.

The topic of class is one that Bong Joon-ho has a clear fascination with. He’s skewered classicism in all of his films to some degree. Prior to Parasite in 2019, his most focused social commentary on class was found in his 2013 film Snowpiercer which saw the lower class positioned at the back of a train in squalid conditions while the wealthy lived large at the head of the train.

This same subject of class is less overt in Parasite but far more grounded and effectively subtle to the point of never overshadowing the story being told for the sake of its themes.

Tilda Swinton monologues about class in Snowpiercer  •  2013

For a full deep-dive analysis into how the themes of Parasite were previously tackled in Bong Joon-ho’s other films, check out this video essay on the subject:

Parasite 2019 movie analysis

The Kim family may be below the Parks in status, but even they can look down on Moon-gwang and her husband. This secret basement reveals an even lower level of status below what we had thought was the floor with the Kim family.

Elevation clearly equates to status; the park’s have a multi-level home at the top of the hill while the Kim’s live below street level in a semi-basement, and the surprise 3rd party lives deep underground in a sub-basement. This vertical comment on status is illustrated cleanly in this alternate poster for the film, without spoiling the sub-basement reveal.

The flooding sequence, as depicted on the poster, also illustrates how the wealthy are unaffected by many of the debilitating circumstances that affect the lower classes as they are, quite literally, above the trouble.

Parasite movie analysis in poster form

Parasite represents the most focused and refined approach to class as a subject that Bong Joon-ho has achieved, and that’s certainly saying something given his impressive body of work.

How to set-dress like Bong Joon-ho

For more Parasite movie analysis, check out our article on how Bong Joon-ho creates meaning through set dressing. The article breaks down how to identify and breakdown set elements in a screenplay. Follow along with the Parasite script as StudioBinder is used to recreate what the actual script breakdown may have looked like.

Up Next: Set dressing in Parasite →

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[Movie Review] Parasite is a disquietingly brilliant critique of our times

Director Bong Joon-ho’s ( Memories of Murder, Okja ) darkly funny social satire, Parasite , has been getting the highest of accolades since its premiere earlier this year, and I’ve been waiting impatiently for it to finally come to my area. Starring Bong’s frequent leading man Song Kang-ho , as well as Jo Yeo-jung, Park So-dam and Choi Woo-shik , the film is an intense, brutal takedown of the absurd tragedies of wealth inequality in late-stage capitalism that will make you gasp as often with unexpected laughter as with alarm and delight at its unending twists.

Without spoiling the movie, the story revolves around Choi and Park’s characters, siblings who live a miserable existence in a squalid basement apartment, their entire family of four unable to find work in what young Koreans colloquially call Hell Joseon. The kids start a chain of events that lead to the four of them getting increasingly entangled with the lives of a rich family, and as the movie progresses these encounters ramp up in a slow, tense escalation that explosively comes to a head in the third act.

Bong has said in interviews that, as a writer-director, he tends to have a clear idea of the sights and sounds that he envisions for the film, meticulously storyboarding scenes far in advance (although he doesn’t hold himself to every particular on the day of shooting). That care and attention to detail are clear in the visual complexity and careful framing of every shot; the visual field and soundscape of this movie are so rich that I already want to go back and see it again. Bong’s movies are varied in scope but they share a brilliantly executed sense of low-level, building dread that almost drips from the screen, and yet never overwhelms what he’s trying to do with the story–the tension never breaks until the precise moment that he wants it to. After watching one of his works the viewer is left feeling as though they’ve been taken on a journey by a virtuoso. The powerful images and feelings it evoked in me have certainly lingered for days.

One of this movie’s many strong points is its simultaneous specificity and universality; this is at once a story about one particular family in South Korea, and a broader commentary on the degrading idols of capitalism that are literally driving people underground, sustained on the dregs and crumbs left behind by a tiny fraction of the extremely wealthy who alone in their carefree existence, untouched by the ravages of food insecurity, economic depression, even environmental disaster. And while this theme is clear to anyone who watches the film, it’s only one aspect of a movie that has multiple embedded layers of social commentary.

Take the obsession of the youngest child in the rich family with “Indians,” for example; his very privileged backyard camping trip in an imported American teepee says volumes about the levels of exploitation going on here (and who is actually the “savage” in this situation, especially when these indigenous motifs play a pivotal role in the climax of the film). Or the pointed, conscious use of English words by characters of every social class as a marker of culture, of knowledge that somehow has the potential to lift them up, rooted in the pervasiveness of American imperialism. And yet from early on, one of the characters repeatedly breaks the fourth wall by saying an object is “metaphorical,” an indirect and gentle poke at all this symbolism from the director, as if he’s winking at the analyses he knows are coming in reviews like this.

The cast are across-the-board excellent, which is no surprise given this incredible lineup. Song is his usual unquantifiable genius in the role of Choi’s father, and Lee Seon-kyun gives all the power of his unique voice and manner to the cynically suave head of the rich family. Jo Yeo-jung is fascinating in her role of the oblivious, pampered samo-nim , the epitome of what Song observes at one point about their household: they’re not nice even though they’re rich, but because they are rich.

In this cutthroat world where most people have to claw and scrape for every won, no one has that luxury except those who are so wealthy that they’re insulated from the nightmare threat of poverty. And even that “niceness” proves to be very different from goodness–although I would venture to say that no character in this film possesses the latter quality. The system itself has become so unlivable that we are becoming alienated from our own humanity, bit by bit, until we become used to living in the dark, and forget the feeling of light and freedom.

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Tags: Bong Joon-ho , Choi Woo-shik , Jo Yeo-jung , Lee Seon-kyun , Parasite , Park So-dam , Song Kang-ho

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November 5, 2019 at 10:08 AM

Great movie. As Bong Joon Ho said in an interview, there's only one country in the world now, and that's capitalism. It transcends borders and that is why Parasite has resonated so well in the US and in Europe.

Also, as an aside, Choi Woo Shik, who is great in this film, has just signed up to do a movie with Suzy directed by Kim Tae Yong (director of Late Autumn starring Hyun Bin and Tang Wei). Has he already served his military service? He was born in 1990 and it seems like a lot of contemporaries are currently enlisted (i.e Go Pyo Kyung or Park Hyung Sik) or already served (i.e. Jung Hae In and Park Seo Joon)...

soulsearch12

November 5, 2019 at 2:44 pm.

Choi Woo Shik is a Canadian citizen. He spent most of his formative years there (Middle School-College). Also he is 29 years old as of now (American age), so he is past the enlistment age for men in SK which is 28.

November 5, 2019 at 4:44 PM

I thought even if you were a Canadian citizen, if you were born in South Korea, you still had to serve. That's why some Korean-American men born in SK avoid traveling there until they pass age 35. But if Choi found a way to bypass that, then good for him.

November 5, 2019 at 5:23 PM

I think that only applies to people with dual citizenship.

November 5, 2019 at 6:56 PM

Honestly, it seems very unclear:

"According to the Overseas Emigration Law, “second-generation South Koreans” are obligated to serve only when they have reported permanent return. Therefore, if you emigrated overseas before you were six years old but you renounced your permanent residence and reported permanent return to South Korea, your military service duty will be reinstated."

http://overseas.mofa.go.kr/us-sanfrancisco-en/wpge/m_4775/contents.do

November 5, 2019 at 9:50 PM

Honestly I am a bit confused about it. I heard that recently the same thing too! But I am just confused is regarding Choi's situation, because he is 29 about to be 30 soon. If he was going to enlist, it would have been last year.

November 5, 2019 at 10:06 PM

Lee Junho was also born in 1990 and just enlisted this year. Hong Jung Hyun was also born in 1990 and will enlist soon. Lee Jong Suk was born in 1989 and just enlisted this year.

Maybe Choi wants to go to the Oscars first to see Parasite win Best Foreign Language Film...

November 5, 2019 at 10:13 PM

@fogcity Can't reply to your latest response but the whole timeline w/ enlistment is a bit confusing for me. I just knew that 28 was the cut-off date for most men. I guess we will find out by next year, if he has not enlisted by then, I guess we will know the answer lol.

November 6, 2019 at 8:14 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, people who graduate high school overseas don't have to serve? Wooshik moved to Canada when he was 10 and went to school there until university before coming back to Korea. People with dual citizenship or overseas permanent residence visa (the one Ok Taecyeon had before he gave it up in order to enlist) can choose whether to enlist or not (but they have to give up their overseas citizenship / residency)

November 6, 2019 at 9:00 PM

I don't think graduating from a foreign high school disqualifies people from military service. I think a lot of wealthy people send their children to overseas boarding schools, i.e. actor Kim Ji Seok but he still had to serve in the military.

But you're right, I think Choi Woo Shik probably hasn't given up his Canadian permanent residence visa/citizenship.

refresh_daemon

November 15, 2019 at 6:20 pm.

This only applies to those with dual citizenship or Koreans who were registered on their family's official family register. If he gave up his Korean citizenship, retains his Canadian citizenship and remains in Korea on a visa, as opposed to permanent residency (that is, reclaiming Korean citizenship), then he does not need to serve.

There is a sizable population of ethnic Koreans with non-Korean nationalities in the entertainment industry who do not have to serve mandatory military service.

There are also some rare cases where overseas Koreans who are unaware of their dual citizenship or family registration return to Korea and are surprised when they are conscripted at the airport.

November 5, 2019 at 10:17 AM

Really want to watch it but it won't be available in cinemas nereby so I'm hoping it's available somewhere online.

November 5, 2019 at 10:54 AM

it is, it has been... amazingly before it was released.

November 5, 2019 at 1:19 PM

It would not surprise me if Netflix picks it up. They have been putting a lot of attention on international content.

egads aka Dame Maggie

November 5, 2019 at 2:48 pm.

Which reminds me, the Kim Go Eun film was just released on Netflix today.

November 5, 2019 at 2:53 PM

Yay! I lover her.

frabbycrabsis loves KBS Drama Specials

November 5, 2019 at 3:30 pm.

The clips I saw were stunning! I think it's going to be a really emotionally affective film.

November 6, 2019 at 6:03 PM

Hi, can someone tell me the name of this?

November 6, 2019 at 6:08 PM

Tune in for Love @drunkfairy12

November 6, 2019 at 7:12 AM

@larelle79 , it's coming to St Louis on the 14th at a cinema named Ronnie's! I can't believe we're getting it.

3 larelle79

November 5, 2019 at 10:34 am.

Lee Seon kyun and Jo Yeo jung were just fantastic as the parents Park. I was thinking the entire time with them, they are a couple that deserve each other so they will not have to inflict their being on other people. I found myself thinking about what life would be like for them after the movie ended and it wasn't pretty and also, it is what they deserved.

This was a good film and what happened is just what you expect but still shocking because the world is like that and there is that denial that some of us have thinking that it is not.

November 6, 2019 at 7:13 AM

oop, you've already seen it so never mind 😁

November 6, 2019 at 7:31 AM

I was out of town for a conference and saw it there. I will more than likely see it again.

4 Zestileigh

November 5, 2019 at 10:42 am.

I think the most poignant moment for me was at the very end.

SPOILER (though I'm keeping it vague)

That joining the system and climbing up the social ladder to become rich himself is the only thing he can think of to help his family KILLS me, because it's so accurate to real life.

November 5, 2019 at 10:46 AM

And knowing that it won't happen and is a legit pipe dream is all the more heartbreaking.

November 5, 2019 at 1:30 PM

Yes! I didn't want to spoil it in the review, but it's a perfect ending for the reasons you both mentioned. Even after all that, Ki-taek can't break free of the mental chains of the false promises of capitalism.

November 5, 2019 at 2:24 PM

And the part of his mind that does not even realize this cannot happen and also wasn't, you know who I mean, there.

Ugh, my heart for him.

November 5, 2019 at 11:13 AM

Thank you @laica <3.

I've been rooting for this movie since pre-production and then Cannes and all the way to the Oscars. Let's hope it'll be another first for South Korea.

I hope Bong's next film will be with Ha Jung-woo. I love Song Kang-ho to pieces but he has been in 5 Bong films already.

November 5, 2019 at 3:56 PM

IA. Song is the GOAT, but I would LOVE to see him work with some other South Korean talents. Primarily younger talents, that are on the rise because that would be quite huge for them.

November 5, 2019 at 6:07 PM

That's the thing with well known art-house directors like Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook and Lee Chang-dong. They have actors that they trust and they cast them over and over. It's like PD Ahn Pan-seok of television.

Ah yes IA! Any actor that gets to work with them surely benefits in some way or another. Plus, it gives them a bit of a boost international wise since their films usually gets into film festivals/awards discussion too.

Side note if this film wins/nom'd for other big categories at Oscars, I can already see a mountain tide of Korean celebs posting non stop online lol.

November 5, 2019 at 8:08 PM

He offered Choi the role in Parasite after he had a small role in Okja. If he follows the same pattern, maybe he's offered a bigger role to Park Seo Joon in his next film. But Park Seo Joon is already a big star.

November 5, 2019 at 10:00 PM

Bong has said that he likes 'ordinary' looking faces, not the high shine sheen. So he could since he spoke well of Park, but honestly I feel like it will be a mixture of well established talents that he has worked with before, and newer hotter talents. I hope some of my faves can be cast lol!

November 6, 2019 at 7:44 AM

That's not surprising and I don't see him casting actors based on their pretty face and popularity like some film directors lately. He always pick young talents like Go Ah-sung and Choi. He might cast Park So-dam again and the rest will always be his trusted veterans. I'm glad he is giving the young indie darlings of Chungmuro a chance to be noticed outside of Korea.

6 Kafiyah Bello

November 5, 2019 at 11:35 am.

I agree it was fantastic. My only question is the use of Native American imagery, was it intentional? Native Ameticans have gone through enough being used as props, so I hope that wasn't the case here.

November 5, 2019 at 11:36 AM

Yes it was. Everything about it was inappropriate, intentional and indifferent.

November 5, 2019 at 12:47 PM

Bong Jong Ho said in an interview he chose the Native American imagery as a parallel to how America/the mansion already had previous occupants but the new arrivals (the Europeans/the Kim family) came and did a hostile takeover.

November 5, 2019 at 12:53 PM

The use of Native American imagery was really a great stroke of social commentary.

November 5, 2019 at 1:34 PM

Yes! Others have already mentioned this, but in Bong's words:

"I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a commentary on what happened in the United States, but it’s related in the sense that this family starts infiltrating the house and they already find a family living there. So you could say it’s a joke in that context,” Bong says. “But at the same time, the Native Americans have a very complicated and long, deep history. But in this family, that story is reduced to a young boy’s hobby and decoration. [The boy’s mother] mentions the tent as a U.S. imported good, and I think it’s like the Che Guevara T-shirts that people wear. They don’t know the life of the revolutionary figure, they just think it’s a cool T-shirt. That’s what happens in our current time: The context and meaning behind these actual things only exists as a surface-level thing.”

Here is the interview (full of spoilers though, beware): https://ew.com/movies/2019/10/23/parasite-bong-joon-ho-ending-explained/

November 5, 2019 at 2:45 PM

I figured, because he is a very intelligent director and he would not use such imagery if there were no meaning behind it.

Can you please share the link to where he said that? Thanks!

November 5, 2019 at 3:23 PM

It's shared in the comment above yours, by Laica. https://ew.com/movies/2019/10/23/parasite-bong-joon-ho-ending-explained/

November 5, 2019 at 3:54 PM

Lol! Thanks, will check out the whole article. The explanation definitely enriches the story!

Kafiyah Bello

November 5, 2019 at 1:00 pm.

@larelle79 , @fogcity , and @egads , thank you. I wasn't sure. Good, it makes me like the movie even more.

November 5, 2019 at 1:08 PM

While Mr. Park and Mr. Kim were dressed up as Native Americans for the little boy's birthday party to ambush the son in a game of cowboys and Indians, they were ambushed by the housekeeper's husband (aka the actual "Native American"/"savage"/previous occupant in this scenario).

November 5, 2019 at 1:20 PM

And what Park said to Kim when Kim said this does not feel right.

I mean....UGH !!!!!

November 5, 2019 at 2:28 PM

Agreed! So many layers. I love how this movie is both incredibly blunt and extremely subtle at the same time. (Bong said in another interview, "The metaphors are there, but on the other had, you can't get your skull crushed in by a metaphor.")

November 5, 2019 at 3:14 PM

*hand, yikes

November 5, 2019 at 1:29 PM

Parasite’s Wild Ending, Broken Down Having trouble processing the big Parasite climax? Good. That’s just what Bong Joon-ho intended.

https://www.gq.com/story/bong-joon-ho-breaks-down-parasites-wild-ending

7 strawberry

November 5, 2019 at 12:09 pm.

Thanks for the review! My local theater just started showing this movie this month. I want to go watch it as soon as I get some free time!

8 tsutsuloo

November 5, 2019 at 12:35 pm.

Thanks for your review, @laica . I just saw this film Sunday morning at the cinema with my family and can't stop thinking about it. After assiduously avoiding all press and video, I'm now gobbling up reviews, thought pieces, and Eng-subbed cast interviews.

None of the American reviewers I've read—present company excepted—mention watching Korean dramas. Having watched SKY Castle , I had a better understanding of how disadvantaged the the two Kim siblings were compared to their wealthier peers. Did anyone else catch that the forged college certificate was from Yonsei University?!

Gi Jung and Gi Woo are clearly bright kids—but it's not enough to get into Korean university. At some point, the kids went to a good school with the likes of the Park's former tutor, Min Hyuk. But I can imagine the family slipping downward economically as the parents cycled through dead-end jobs.

I'm grateful I managed to catch this before it left my small city. I held off watching a bootleg online and loved sharing this experience with audience that cackled, gasped, and applauded alongside me.

November 5, 2019 at 1:50 PM

I was going to mention this too. Its been a hoot reading American reviews of the film because its soooo apparent that the reviewers have (mostly) never watched K-dramas. If they watched 'The Handmaiden' from 2016 they should have picked up common theme of the great social & economic divide, the plucky resourceful poor striving to play the rich for fools

November 5, 2019 at 5:12 PM

True but most of the top film critics in the US are fans of Bong Joon-ho since MEMORIES of MURDER and Park Chan-wook since OLD BOY. They may not be as familiar with the Korean cultures but they are familiar with their kind of films.

November 5, 2019 at 2:35 PM

I tend not to read anyone else's review until I've finished my own to avoid getting unintentionally influenced, so I'm just now started to read interviews and haven't yet gotten to other reviews. But I'm not surprised to hear that some American critics missed a lot of these nuances and cultural context. (I do feel, however, that one of the great things about the movie is that there are some things that everyone will get about it, and some that only Korean speaking/culturally conversant audiences will get - it works on many levels, but it WORKS.)

November 5, 2019 at 2:55 PM

So true. When it comes to Korean films I’d read the local reviews first over foreign critics. Some said that it was better than MEMORIES of MURDER but I love them both equally. PARASITE scores a 99% on RT from 265 out of 267 US film critics . It’s well loved worldwide.

November 5, 2019 at 12:40 PM

I was very impressed by Jo Yeo-Yung. she brought a madness to being privileged.

10 egads aka Dame Maggie

November 5, 2019 at 1:42 pm.

I'm particularly glad that I made the effort to see this film in the theater just this morning (so, thanks @laica for writing this review and getting it posted while everything is still quite fresh in my mind) because visually there are some scenes that are particularly impactful up there on that large screen. Bong Joon Ho's use of space and light here is sometimes breathtaking even when what it happening is anything but beautiful.

I'm glad I only knew, in the very broadest sense, what this film was about, so watching the destruction unfold was both darkly humorous and terrifying. I want to go on and on, but also don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't seen it yet.

November 5, 2019 at 2:08 PM

I don't think I have ever seen a house play such an important character in a film in a long time.

Everything about that house just fit the Parks to a frightening tee.

November 5, 2019 at 2:30 PM

Perhaps this isn't the place to say that I love that house, and would like to live in it.

November 5, 2019 at 2:33 PM

Would it be your home or just a piece of your pride to show off.

November 6, 2019 at 12:52 PM

I’d seal off the basement, just to be sure.

November 6, 2019 at 3:59 PM

You are obviously unaware of my reputation....

November 6, 2019 at 1:29 PM

The heating bill would be phenomenal.

November 6, 2019 at 3:58 PM

Not necessarily. Concrete can be a good insulator, and if all that glass is triple paned, it should be okay, especially if it's facing the right way to catch the bulk of the daylight. Plus, in my house, the motto is to add another layer of clothing.

11 loveblossom🌸

November 5, 2019 at 2:00 pm.

Reading the positive reviews make me want to watch this movie. I didn’t think it would be in my local theaters, but it is! I’m too chicken to watch it on a big theater screen though.

November 5, 2019 at 2:17 PM

It is a lot to process. I remember after seeing it feeling some kind of way and then feeling no way at all. But I think you will enjoy it.

November 5, 2019 at 2:32 PM

Don't miss the theatre experience! This movie should really be seen on the big screen. I'm not usually a fan of horror, and to compare a similar movie, Park Chan-wook's recent film Burning was a bit too brutal for me, but I Parasite is breathtaking and thrilling, and sometimes horrifying, but it never goes further than it needs to. And I'd rewatch it, whereas Memories of Murder was so uncomfortable to watch that, brilliant though it is, I don't think I want to see it again.

November 5, 2019 at 2:40 PM

I agree. While there is violence, nothing is gratuitous or overly graphic. However, seeing some scenes up on that large screen with the sound surrounding you, really is an experience that is worth the effort.

It is a beautiful film to look at, even is places it should not be and I feel like crap seeing beauty in someone else's plight.

November 5, 2019 at 6:29 PM

"Burning" was a Lee Chang-dong film.

"The Host" is my most viewed film from Bong.

November 5, 2019 at 6:50 PM

Ooh, so sorry, yes! I mixed them up.

loveblossom🌸

November 5, 2019 at 4:34 pm.

@larelle79 @laica @egads Thank you all for your input!

12 Carolina

Great review. I also enjoyed Bong Joon-ho's other films. I loved the cinematography, the raining scenes were amazing, so much detail to keep an eye on.

November 6, 2019 at 12:55 PM

The flooding ! 💩😵

13 soulsearch12

November 5, 2019 at 2:50 pm.

All the praise here has been said so I will say is that the film is a masterpiece. The swift of genre tones, cinematography, direction, acting, and etc. was magnificently presented here. What is has to say about class, how we treat others, what is our role in society, and many more are presented here that is specifically Korean but is all the more universal for it.

A rousing achievement, and surely one of the year's or imo decade's best films of the 2010's. Definitely going to win South Korea it's much deserved and awaited Oscar for Best International Film, and a slew of other nominations as well. I hope that this means that the younger cast (Park So-Dam/Choi Woo-shik) career's gets a huge boost from this!!

Side note- Bong's next film is going to a Korean language film as well but a Horror-Action one :O I can not wait for the Korean cast he conjures up, he and Park Chan-Wook choose great Korean actors for their films (Imo they act the most natural/strongest).

November 5, 2019 at 3:25 PM

Choi Woo Shik has already been cast opposite Suzy in Kim Tae Yong's next film. He's the director of the critically acclaimed "Late Autumn" starring Hyun Bin and Tang Wei (his now wife). Doubt Choi would have been cast in this film without being in Parasite first.

November 5, 2019 at 3:53 PM

Yep! I think that one is going to be shooting soon (Possibly next Jan?). Suzy and him should be an interesting combo. One thing is that he said he wants to make the transition to Hollywood, so I am also curious about that as well. Helps that he speaks English!

November 5, 2019 at 7:00 PM

Transitioning to Hollywood might be hard for him. There aren't that many roles for Asian-Americans. Even Lee Byung Hun, who is much more famous than Choi, said that he was used to being #1 on the callsheet in Korea, but when he was in the G.I. Joe movie, his role was so much smaller than what he was used to and he spent most of the day waiting around in his dressing room for his scenes.

November 5, 2019 at 7:51 PM

Agreed. Hollywood's racist and it's hard enough for Asian Americans to get cast in roles. I'm watching Korean American Stephen Yeun's career with interest and I hope his bi-cultural upbringing brings him more international roles.

November 5, 2019 at 9:54 PM

Yeah, even Choi himself was like he would like to work in Hollywood someday. However, he also said that he hopes H-wood casts more Asian talents but its holding out for bated breath tbh.

As for Lee Byung Hun, he did get the short end of the stick. I feel like he does both work in SK/Hollywood, and that can be hard balancing those out. I just wish more Asian talents could find more substantial work, since the world is going global.

MikeyD signed up

November 5, 2019 at 10:43 pm.

Its ironic that he wants to make the transition TO Hollywood while most Dramabeans posters have made the transition FROM Hollywood to K-dramas.

November 5, 2019 at 4:29 PM

I NEED to watch this!! I'm sure it'll be added in my favorite korean films list among with Train to Busan, The Taxi driver and Midnight Runners.

November 5, 2019 at 5:34 PM

Some bits were really good - like the scenes of the flood or the recurring theme with the smell of poorness. The violence felt a bit gratuitous, but i could appreciate the poetry of the little man struggling for survival and accidentally bursting the perfect bubble of the privileged in the process, the fake savagery of the Indian playacting hiding the real savagery beneath... The movie tried to make a lot of deep statements about the have and have nots, desperation and entitlement. Mostly successfully, although to me it felt like trying too hard at times. I referred to it as pretentious before and I stand by that assessment. More than anything, the movie felt like a piece intended for Cannes critics acclaim. Additionally, in the attempt at universalness the movie lost most of its Korean-ness which explains the movie's broad appeal but is still a big negative in my books. Overall... it did some things very well but i did not love it at much as most people did.

November 5, 2019 at 6:28 PM

Thank you for sharing. It's good to have different views on this film.

November 5, 2019 at 7:55 PM

I haven't read what Koreans critics and fans have had to say about the film. Do Korean audiences feel its Korean-ness was sacrificed for broader appeal?

November 5, 2019 at 9:58 PM

Hmm, I read several Korean people's takes on it and some of the references (the cake business, Kakao talk, random, etc.) were what they caught then international ones. Plus the film did extremely well in SK, one of the top 2 films of the year (South Korean film/not a H-wood one), so the audience really responded well to it.

Plus a lot of the reviews I read is that because it was specifically Korean (scholar rock/etc), it was made the more universal in a way because even if its in a diff. country/culture, classism/social issues are universal which is what the film portrayed well.

oppafangirl

November 7, 2019 at 12:48 pm.

Can you link me to the reviews which are Korean and talk about that rock! I want to know all the Korean specific details of this film?

November 9, 2019 at 9:08 PM

https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/14/20906430/parasite-bong-joon-ho-interview-rock-peach-spoilers

Where did the idea come from to use the scholar’s rock? There were a bunch of them around my grandfather’s apartment but I never really got what they were.

My dad used to collect them, too. He quit doing it because they were so heavy. We’d go to mountains looking for these scholar’s rocks, basically just picking up rocks. It’s a weird thing. I’m 50, and there’s no one in my generation — my colleagues, my friends — who collects these things anymore. Rocks? Why?

"I can’t let anyone unfamiliar with scholar’s rocks pass it over, I have to create that odd mood. For actors and directors, I think that’s a big feat. [Laughs] Even though I’m the one who said it, I know it sounds weird. But, for foreigners seeing this stuff, thinking, “That’s weird, why is that in there? Does that have to be there? Is it a symbol?” Well, the actor outright says it’s a symbol, so it’s even weirder. “So maybe it’s not a symbol?”

It's something that used to be given as a gift, like a high honor bestowed to someone back in the day. But I remember reading that not many people do that anymore, because the scholar rock is quite heavy.

November 10, 2019 at 12:23 PM

@soulsearch12 —Thank you for sharing that interview! I've also added Wages of Fear to my movie list since it had affected him so much as a child.

November 7, 2019 at 9:54 AM

The film is no more 'international' than the usual K-dramas set in Seoul. The references to American culture in the film seemed to have been inserted to paint the rich family as rather effete and annoying.

November 6, 2019 at 1:44 PM

I really enjoyed the first half of the film, really smooth. The former housekeeper portion wasn’t nearly as slick. The acting was excellent .

16 zanearaki

November 5, 2019 at 5:48 pm.

One thing I love in this movie is how fast-paced it is without sacrificing the momentum that showcase the turning point of the characters. Post-watch me felt uneasy not because of the murders, but rather due to the drastic change of the poor characters. The way they're portrayed makes me feel as if they know what they're gonna do given the opportunity, and they're like rats/cockroach waiting in the dark for the appearance food and just the smell of it is enough to begin their move. They're smart and cunning, and in a way, as an audience I was fooled with their transformation- from an ordinary family struggling with poverty to a team of professional conmen knowing the ins and outs of their target and the environment. The duality of the poor is something I thought was done brilliantly in the movie. They're both the refugee and the colonist. They're trying to take the opportunities in the new place, at the same time manipulating the rich and eyeing for the chance to swap their lives with the rich's.

November 5, 2019 at 8:01 PM

The Parks also have that duality—as benefactors and parasites who need others do manage their basic daily functions. The only things the Parks do for themselves is Mr. Park's job, eating and sex (was that clockwise or counterclockwise?).

MapleSilver

November 5, 2019 at 8:10 pm.

What did you all think of that sofa scene? Apparently it caught many in the Korean audience off guard as the movie was only rated 15 in Korea. It's rated R here in the States. It was censored out completely in some Asian countries.

November 5, 2019 at 8:37 PM

I'm traumatized. I had no idea that they would include a scene that vulgar, because there's no indication from the movie's tone that it would go there (or maybe I'm just ignorant). I didn't watch the whole scene, but I do have a glimpse of what was about to happen. That, contrasted with the poor struggling to hide and happen to be in the same room, was quite hard to stomach. I couldn't imagine how they must've felt. To what degree should they stoop even lower?

November 5, 2019 at 8:38 PM

And I'm also curious. What do you think of the scene?

November 5, 2019 at 11:25 PM

It was hard to stomach, not only for the reason you stated, but also the extent of the "parasitic invasion." When your most uninhibited thoughts are revealed in your most intimate moment, and to be violated in such a way... {shudder} It's hard for me to be more sympathetic toward one family over the other. They both kinda deserve each other.

November 9, 2019 at 9:36 AM

For me, the frottage sex scene was enlightening and horrific. Enlightening because even in their most intimate moments, the Parks co-opt a dirt-spoon fantasy. But it was horrific to overhear the Parks' sh**ty comments and witness their intimacy from just one step away. Weren't we all hiding under the coffee table with the Kims?

As other Beanies have noted, there's a sharp contrast between KoreanTV/Cable treatment of sexuality vs film. I'm sex positive (and married 24 yrs) but Korean movies often make me utter, "Yech! This is a bit much." (The 2018 film High Society is a recent example. It involved two side characters and was ostensibly performed in the process of making a specific type of canvas. But it was Just Too Much.)

Anyway, back to Parasite . On the positive side, I support consensual role play and it was good to see Yung Gyo explicitly tell her husband what she needed. I was more surprised to see class integrated into their role play. Initially I wasn't sure if the reference to drugs was performative or not. She was a bit strung out that first day Kim Gi Woo met her for his interview but I now I chalk it up to fatigue from maternal worrying. Although pampered Choi Yung Gyo doesn't cook, clean or work outside of the house, she seems to carry nearly the full load of domestic mental labor for the Park family.

November 5, 2019 at 9:00 PM

Is the 15 rating the same as PG-13 in America? I think the point of the sofa scene was to show how the Parks insulted the poor (their former driver) for having sex in a car/doing drugs but used it in their role-playing. So they kind of got a thrill from pretending to be poor, which speaks to their massive class privilege.

But I wasn't bothered by the scene at all. It wasn't as explicit as the one in last year's Burning.

November 6, 2019 at 1:26 PM

I was surprised at that scene. They could have conveyed the foreplay without actually showing it. I was confused by Mrs. Park’s pleas for drugs, was that some sort of role play? If so, I was lost on that point.

November 6, 2019 at 11:31 PM

While there was no nudity, there was some explicit touching. The director did say in an interview that "the camera has crossed the line" by showing everything. I am not sure how else to interpret it other than to drive home the point of "crossing the line." As for Mrs. Park's pleas for drugs, I guess you were right. Imagining her in a cheap underwear and taking drugs became their fetish.

November 7, 2019 at 4:19 PM

The only thing surprising about it was that it didn't follow the standard 'love scene' choreography that we've seen repeated in a hundred thousand other films and TV shows. But I've learned to expect the unexpected from Korean directors.

November 5, 2019 at 8:23 PM

I chuckled a bit on "Mr. Park's job, eating and sex" because truly, that was what's seen of them and how juxtaposed it is with the poor's unending machination as they do the three essential things. x)

17 michykdrama

November 5, 2019 at 7:36 pm.

Thank you @laica for the write up! I missed many of the nuances in the film when I saw it (I am so bad at these things!) but it was still very thought provoking and enjoyable at the same time. So I really appreciated your review and for pointing them out.

I would say it might be better to watch it with an open mind and not worry about the references and then read the reviews soon after so you can savour the nuances and brilliance in the mind or during a re watch. And defintiely in a cinema if you can.

I caught it long ago when it just came out and I’m so happy you all did a review here. I blogged about my thoughts but certainly it’s a pale poor one compared to Laica’s one here!

Will you all be doing one for Kim Ji Young, Born in 1982? I’d LOVE for you all to do that and it would be a great movie for discussion too!

I have been keeping tabs on KIM JI YOUNG, BORN in 1982 and it's topping the box-office right now. http://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/news/boxOffice_Daily.jsp?mode=BOXOFFICE_DAILY

michykdrama

November 6, 2019 at 1:58 am.

Yes! It hit 2 million viewers very fast and Im so darn pleased.

November 7, 2019 at 1:09 PM

I am actually really looking forward to watching it, i also ordered the book ( just that it's English translation comes out next year, too long of wait)

November 5, 2019 at 8:46 PM

Thanks! I've been following the success of (and the backlash against) both the book and movie, and I definitely plan to write about it once I have a chance to see it. I don't know if it's going to be theatrically released in the US though, especially outside NY/LA etc.

November 6, 2019 at 1:57 AM

Fabulous! That’s great news. Looking forward to it. I’m hoping to catch it when it’s released in SG. 14th Nov is The Date!

18 Fly Colours

November 14, 2019 at 6:18 am.

Just watched the film, and needed to come here to read the review and the Beanies' comments! It is a brilliant, funny, unsettling and ultimately depressing, but for good reason. Loved it!

November 23, 2019 at 12:29 PM

What I took away from this storyline? At the end of the day, the rich and elite are the true parasites. Hoarding and flaunting resourcing whiling turning the other cheek at the plight of the poor and the masses. All while shamelessly and selfishly stripping those that support their lifestyle of their pursuit of happiness and dignity.

20 Bob Kretshmer

October 31, 2020 at 3:39 am.

I am 81 years old and in 1960-1961, I was stationed near Seoul with the Army engineers. I personally believe the U.S. should not get involved in foreign civil wars. However, South Koreans in general. seem to have a better quality of life than North Koreans. I wonder if Parasite could have been made in the North. It's your country. make your choice. Unite with the North and experience what they have to offer!

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‘Parasite’ Ending Explained: You Can’t Go Wrong With No Plans

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The Big Picture

• Parasite explores greed and class divides, showcasing the clash between the wealthy Park family and the struggling Kim family.
• The film's shocking twist reveals a hidden man living in the Park family's basement, leading to chaos and bloodshed.
• Parasite offers a bleak and realistic ending, highlighting the idea of wealth as a prison and economic immobility as the new norm.

Bong Joon-ho ’s masterful Academy Award winner, Parasite , is a brutal satire about wealth disparity and the lengths we're willing to go to for family. One of only three movies to win both the Best Picture Oscar and the Palme d'Or , Parasite shifts from a biting dramedy to a suspenseful thriller in its second act, proving Joon-ho's affinity for humor, horror, and everything in between. Set in Seoul, South Korea, the movie follows the Kim family, who work low-income jobs and struggle to make ends meet. When son Ki-Woo ( Choi Woo-shik ) secures a gig tutoring the wealthy Park family's young daughter ( Jung Ji-so ), the Kims slowly begin to infiltrate the home, enjoying the unfamiliar luxuries afforded to the Parks. However, when the Parks' idyllic lifestyle proves to house a disturbing secret , chaos and bloodshed ensue, and we're left wondering who the parasites really are. So, how does Parasite end, and what does it mean?

Greed and class discrimination threatens the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.

What Is 'Parasite' About?

In Parasite , the Kim family's quest to overtake the Parks' home is no simple feat, and they do so by slyly getting the Parks to hire them without realizing that they're all related. Once Ki-woo gets his foot in the door by becoming Da-hye's tutor — with a certificate forged by his clever sister, Ki-jung ( Park So-dam ) — the pieces begin to fall strategically into place. Ki-woo uses his standing to introduce Ki-jung to the Parks, with her posing as a sought-after art therapist. Mr. and Mrs. Park ( Lee Sun-kyun and Cho Yeo-jeong ) quickly hire Ki-jung to help their young son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun), who has recently been traumatized after seeing a "ghost" in their kitchen.

The Kim kids then frame the Parks’ driver for being a creep, which allows them to bring in their own father, Ki-taek ( Song Kang-ho ), for the job. Finally, the Parks let go of their longtime housekeeper, Moon-gwang ( Lee Jung-eun ), after Ki-jung exploits Moon-gwang's peach allergy to make it look like she has tuberculosis, paving the way for the Kims’ mother, Chung-sook ( Jang Hye-jin ), to get the gig. The Parks don’t learn that the Kims are related , and the Kims enjoy their time in the Park house, particularly when the wealthy family leaves for a trip.

Who Is the Man in the Basement in 'Parasite?'

Everything seems to be going fine until Moon-gwang returns to the house, claiming to have left something behind. In Parasite 's iconic, shocking twist , said "something" turns out to be Moon-gwang's husband, Geun-se (Park Myung-hoon), who, unbeknownst to the Parks, is living in a secret bunker in the basement , and is revealed to be the "ghost" that Da-Song saw one night when he was sneaking into the kitchen for food.

When the Kims threaten to expose and expel Geun-se, Moon-gwang in turn threatens to expose their familial status to the Parks, which she learns of after hearing them talk to one another. For a while, Moon-gwang and Geun-se get to live the high life until they are overpowered by the Kims, leading to an altercation that leaves Moon-gwang dead and Geun-se once again left in the basement. The Parks return early from their trip due to a storm, so the Kims are forced to leave and sleep in a gymnasium because their basement apartment has been flooded.

What Happens to the Family in 'Parasite'?

Parasite 's pulse-pounding climactic scene finds the Kims being invited to Da-song's birthday party at the Park house. Ki-woo sneaks into the basement to finish off Geun-se once and for all by bludgeoning him with a scholar's rock, but Geun-se, wanting to avenge his wife, escapes by violently cracking Ki-woo in the head instead. Continuing his rampage, a bloodied and terrifying Geun-se bursts out into the sunshine of the backyard birthday party, fatally stabbing Ki-jung and re-traumatizing Da-song before being killed by Ki-taek. When Ki-taek hears Mr. Park, talking about Geun-se's "poor man's smell" (a trait that Mrs. Park earlier commented on regarding Ki-taek), he kills him, too. As the party devolves into hysteria, Ki-taek flees the scene. Ki-woo wakes up sometime later in the hospital having sustained a severe head injury, with his sister dead, his father missing, and himself and his mother being convicted of fraud .

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Sometime later, Ki-woo returns to look at the Park house, where another family has since moved in. He discovers a light flickering in Morse Code, deciphering the message and learning that his father is now living in the house's basement, having had to go into hiding after killing Mr. Park. We then see a sequence where Ki-woo makes enough money to buy the house and free his father. However, it's quickly revealed that the scenes of Ki-woo buying the house are just in his imagination . We’re brought back into reality by the closing shots of the film , not of Ki-woo in the house freeing his father as part of a victorious montage. Parasite ends with Ki-woo exactly where he started, back in his own basement and just as imprisoned as his father, but by economic circumstances rather than legal ones.

Why Is the Movie Called 'Parasite'?

Parasite 's double-ending is what makes it such a gut punch: it’s about a fantasy. We know that Ki-woo will never earn enough money to buy the house and free his father, because Parasite shows that economic mobility is dead. The Kims aren’t a “lazy” family who are simply avoiding hard work. They may be conniving and duplicitous, but they don’t expect others to do their jobs for them, which is more than can be said for the Parks. The Kims’ station in life is set, and it’s only through deceit that they can even come close to the wealth that the Parks possess. For their part, the movie asks if the Parks — wealthy idiots who are dependent on the lower class — are the real “parasites,” who give nothing back and don’t really care about anyone other than themselves. When the slums get flooded and people who have lost what little they had are sleeping in a gym, the Parks are more concerned about their son's birthday party than the well-being of the people they employ.

'Parasite's Bleak Ending Turns Wealth Into a Prison

The bleakness of Parasite 's ending comes from the fact that we know freeing Ki-taek is impossible. Granted, he could just turn himself in, but then he’d just be in another prison, or he’d get the death penalty, so he may as well stay in the basement. The prison of wealth is what entraps the Kims in the first place. Yes, they are “parasites” in a sense, since they feed off the wealthy Park family, but the lavishness of the Parks’ wealth was never going to come to the Kims. The idea of wealth becomes both a fantasy and a prison for the Kim family — something they’ll chase but never achieve. They’re stuck where they are: Ki-taek in a basement, and Ki-woo only able to look at the house from a distance.

These days, there’s a lot of talk about “income inequality”, which is an oddly hopeful phrase, because it implies that we can just rebalance the scales somehow through economic programs and government intervention. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is far more pessimistic, arguing that economic immobility is the new normal , and that those who are born poor will die poor and those who are rich will die rich. The fantasy of upward economic mobility is Ki-woo’s fantasy. If it was as simple as just getting rich and buying that house, why would he have been living in a slum in the first place? It’s a nice thought that he could become rich and buy the house to free his father, and they’d all live happily ever after, but that’s never going to happen. We’re all trapped where we are.

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“Parasite” Explores What Lies Beneath

Once upon a time, there were two families. One was rich and the other was poor. So, to redress the balance, the poor family, who liked the idea of not being poor, moved in with the rich family. Strange to tell, the rich family didn’t even notice. For a while, but only for a while, the two families dwelt in peace. To say that they all lived happily ever after, or even that they all lived, would not be quite true.

Such is the tale told by the Korean director Bong Joon-ho in his new movie, “Parasite,” which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year. The judges at Cannes are no more infallible than the voters at the Academy Awards, but in this case the laurels were well deserved, and, amid the plaudits, there was a shade of relief. I know many people who were captivated by “ The Host ,” Bong’s twisted fable of eco-mutation, but that came out in 2006, and since then, especially in “ Snowpiercer ” (2013) and “ Okja ” (2017), his fantastical ventures have strayed toward the wanton. Now, with “Parasite,” he is back on track with a vengeance.

Richard Brody on Oscars 2020

The poor family is the one we encounter first. Their very first action, indeed, defines their plight. Inhabiting a cramped apartment below street level, with meagre resources, they rely on free Wi-Fi from surrounding businesses, and, at this moment, the hunt is on for a signal. It’s the enterprising daughter of the family, Kim Ki-jung (Park So-dam), who finally gets a connection, by crouching on a raised platform at one end of the bathroom, beside the toilet—which will, before the movie is done, erupt under the force of flooded sewers. To add to the charm, the apartment has an issue with stinkbugs. When a fumigator approaches, up goes the cry “We’ll get free extermination!” What a boast.

Ki-jung has an older brother, a quiet lad named Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik). Their mother and father, Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) and Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), are flustered and foulmouthed. At present, the family’s sole source of income derives from folding pizza boxes, although Ki-taek, like Mr. Micawber, in “David Copperfield,” is perennially and pompously confident that something will turn up. “We’re gathered here today to celebrate the reconnection of our phones and this bounteous Wi-Fi,” he declares. Everyone is impressed, therefore, when Ki-woo is visited by an old school friend, who, unlike him, went on to college—and who, moreover, arrives with a solid proposal. Would Ki-woo care to take over a private tutoring gig? He’s certainly bright enough. The trouble is that he doesn’t have any suitable documentation, such as a printed diploma. Correction: he does have a diploma, thanks to his sister. She’s always been a whiz at Photoshop.

The air in the Kim household is alive with what you might call hecticity, and Bong—whose compositional eye and nose for atmosphere are keener than ever—insures that, as Ki-woo walks to his job interview, we sense the advent of a blessed calm. Encastled behind lofty walls and girdled by greensward (sprinklers feed the greenness, with a gentle hiss) is the home of Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) and his wife, Yeon-kyo (Jo Yeo-jeong), who is somewhat less serene than her surroundings. Their offspring are Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), the girl whom Ki-woo will teach, and her younger brother, Da-song (Jung Hyun-jun), who is a pest. He has a yen for all things Native American, and there’s a brief prick of unease as the new tutor is shown around by a housekeeper. Stuck to the wall is an arrow, tipped with a sucker: a leftover from the kid’s unruly games, though you wonder if it points the way ahead. Will there be further attacks, and will they all count as play?

Ki-woo fares well in his appointed task, and thereby establishes a pattern. Through cunning and calculation, his sister is soon enlisted as an art therapist for Da-song; his father is hired as a driver; and his mother, to complete the set, finds herself running the opulent home, supplanting the luckless housekeeper. (Not that we’ve seen the last of her .) What matters is that each of them pretends to be unrelated to the others. As a result, although the nest is under siege, the Parks have no idea that they are being invaded by the Kims. The collective noun for cuckoos, by the way, is an asylum.

What sort of movie is this? It’s not a home-intrusion thriller, like “Unlawful Entry” (1992) or “ Panic Room ” (2002), though it’s often spikily tense. It’s not a comedy of social upheaval, like “ Boudu Saved from Drowning ” (1932), though it does have wit to spare. (Ki-woo praises one of Da-song’s hideous paintings, saying, “It’s a chimpanzee, right?” “A self-portrait,” his doting mother replies.) And it’s not a horror flick, despite a passing resemblance to Jordan Peele’s “Us,” released this year. Like Peele, Bong makes the eerie suggestion that the underclass might literally exist below the feet of the bourgeoisie. Both directors are at pains to explore what lies beneath, in cellars and basements, though Bong goes one better with a sublimely choreographed sequence in which three of the Kims, needing to hide in a hurry, seek refuge under a low table in the living room—lying there and listening while the master of the house and his wife, in matching gray silk pajamas, make out on the couch. “Buy me drugs,” she suddenly moans, at passion’s peak. That explains a lot.

Bong, in short, is a merchant of stealth. There is no more frenzy in the editing of “Parasite” than there are shudders in the motion of the camera, and, as with Hitchcock, such feline prowling toys with us and claws us into complicity with deeds that we might otherwise fear or scorn. In paraphrase, the politics of the movie (not to mention the title) may smack of the simplistic, and some of the dialogue lands with a thud: “An opening for a security guard attracts five hundred university graduates,” for instance, or, “People who ride the subway have a special smell.” So says Dong-ik, who prefers to lounge in the back of his chauffeured Mercedes. Yet Bong doesn’t set out to paint the wealthy—for all their hauteur—as monsters, or the impoverished as saints, and you don’t emerge from his film feeling bullied. You feel worried and seduced.

“Parasite” is too long, but then, these days, what isn’t? When was the last time that a movie left you wanting more? In this case, to be fair, the length is a pardonable fault, for there is plenty here on which to feast. I loved the wide walls of glass, in the Parks’ residence, with a commanding view of the garden. (Da-song pitches a tepee there: a disturbing spectacle.) When Dong-ik and his family go on vacation, Ki-taek and his family take their place, unbidden, and it’s with deep satisfaction that he sits and surveys the scene. “Rain falling on the lawn, as we sip our whiskeys,” he says. As his wife remarks, money is like an iron: it smooths out the wrinkles. Whether Ki-taek’s relish of illicit pleasures makes him the ultimate rebel or a gullible stooge for the sweet life is open to debate, and it’s no surprise that, with half an hour to go, the plot of “Parasite” could yet turn in many directions. In this unequal world, it could be heading for class war or a brokered peace—for savagery or stillness, or both. Which path Bong selects, of course, I have no intention of revealing. Go and find out for yourself.

The one thing that links “Parasite” to the latest Ang Lee film, “Gemini Man,” is a dread of allergic reactions. The housekeeper in Bong’s film is so sensitive to peaches that, if you wish her harm, you merely gather fuzz from the soft skin of the fruit and waft it over her, like perfume. By contrast, the main menace to Henry Brogan ( Will Smith ), the hero of “Gemini Man,” is bee stings. Any assailants must get hold of some venom, presumably after putting in a polite request to the bee, add the stuff to a dart, and then fire the dart at Henry. Jeez, what a fuss. How about offing the guy with a regular bullet?

No chance. Henry is all but invincible. As a distinguished assassin, nearing the dusk of his career, he is alert to every threat. That is a problem for his brooding boss, Clay Verris (Clive Owen), who entertains the hope that Henry will not simply retire but expire as well. In a bold gesture, and with the covert assistance of special effects, Verris dispatches a younger, whippier Henry—also played by Smith—to kill the older man.

Imagine what wicked sport the Smith of yore would have had with this conceit. Imagine, that is, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air making fun, not just mincemeat, of his middle-aged self. Regrettably, as we know from Smith’s performance in “ Suicide Squad ” (2016), the effusive joy that once ran through his veins appears, for reasons unknown, to have leaked away, and “Gemini Man” is largely a sad affair. Fans of double characters should stick with Austin Powers, who, in “The Spy Who Shagged Me” (1999), enjoys the rare privilege of meeting the person he was ten minutes ago. “You,” he says, “are adorable .” ♦