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It’s so clichéd at this point in the critical conversation during the hot take season of festivals to say, “You’ve never seen a movie quite like X.” Such a statement has become overused to such a degree that it’s impossible to be taken seriously, like how too many major new movies are gifted the m-word: masterpiece. So how do critics convey when a film truly is unexpectedly, brilliantly unpredictable in ways that feel revelatory? And what do we do when we see an actual “masterpiece” in this era of critics crying wolf? Especially one with so many twists and turns that the best writing about it will be long after spoiler warnings aren’t needed? I’ll do my best because Bong Joon-ho ’s “Parasite” is unquestionably one of the best films of the year. Just trust me on this one.

Bong has made several films about class (including " Snowpiercer " and " Okja "), but “Parasite” may be his most daring examination of the structural inequity that has come to define the world. It is a tonal juggling act that first feels like a satire—a comedy of manners that bounces a group of lovable con artists off a very wealthy family of awkward eccentrics. And then Bong takes a hard right turn that asks us what we’re watching and sends us hurtling to bloodshed. Can the poor really just step into the world of the rich? The second half of “Parasite” is one of the most daring things I’ve seen in years narratively. The film constantly threatens to come apart—to take one convoluted turn too many in ways that sink the project—but Bong holds it all together, and the result is breathtaking.

Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) and his family live on the edge of poverty. They fold pizza boxes for a delivery company to make some cash, steal wi-fi from the coffee shop nearby, and leave the windows open when the neighborhood is being fumigated to deal with their own infestation. Kim Ki-woo’s life changes when a friend offers to recommend him as an English tutor for a girl he’s been working with as the friend has to go out of the country for a while. The friend is in love with the young girl and doesn’t want another tutor “slavering” over her. Why he trusts Kim Ki-woo given what we know and learn about him is a valid question.

The young man changes his name to Kevin and begins tutoring Park Da-hye (Jung Ziso), who immediately falls for him, of course. Kevin has a much deeper plan. He’s going to get his whole family into this house. He quickly convinces the mother Yeon-kyo, the excellent Jo Yeo-jeong, that the son of the house needs an art tutor, which allows Kevin’s sister “Jessica” ( Park So-dam ) to enter the picture. Before long, mom and dad are in the Park house too, and it seems like everything is going perfectly for the Kim family. The Parks seem to be happy too. And then everything changes.

The script for “Parasite” will get a ton of attention as it’s one of those clever twisting and turning tales for which the screenwriter gets the most credit (Bong and Han Jin-won , in this case), but this is very much an exercise in visual language that reaffirms Bong as a master. Working with the incredible cinematographer Kyung-pyo Hong (“ Burning ,” “Snowpiercer”) and an A-list design team, Bong's film is captivating with every single composition. The clean, empty spaces of the Park home contrasted against the tight quarters of the Kim living arrangement isn’t just symbolic, it’s visually stimulating without ever calling attention to itself. And there’s a reason the Kim apartment is halfway underground—they’re caught between worlds, stuck in the growing chasm between the haves and the have nots.

"Parasite" is a marvelously entertaining film in terms of narrative, but there’s also so much going on underneath about how the rich use the poor to survive in ways that I can’t completely spoil here (the best writing about this movie will likely come after it’s released). Suffice to say, the wealthy in any country survive on the labor of the poor, whether it’s the housekeepers, tutors, and drivers they employ, or something much darker. Kim's family will be reminded of that chasm and the cruelty of inequity in ways you couldn’t possibly predict. 

The social commentary of "Parasite" leads to chaos, but it never feels like a didactic message movie. It is somehow, and I’m still not even really sure how, both joyous and depressing at the same time. Stick with me here. "Parasite" is so perfectly calibrated that there’s joy to be had in just experiencing every confident frame of it, but then that’s tempered by thinking about what Bong is unpacking here and saying about society, especially with the perfect, absolutely haunting final scenes. It’s a conversation starter in ways we only get a few times a year, and further reminder that Bong Joon-ho is one of the best filmmakers working today. You’ve never seen a movie quite like “Parasite.” Dammit. I tried to avoid it. This time it's true.

This review was filed from the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7th.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Parasite (2019)

132 minutes

Song Kang-Ho as Kim Ki-taek

Lee Sun-Kyun as Park Dong-ik

Cho Yeo-jeong as Yeon-kyo ( Mr. Park's wife )

Choi Woo-shik as Ki-woo ( Ki-taek's son )

Park So-dam as Ki-jung ( Ki-taek's daughter )

Lee Jung-eun as Moon-gwang

Chang Hyae-jin as Chung-sook ( Ki-taek's wife )

• Bong Joon-ho

Director of Photography

• Hong Kyung-pyo

Original Music Composer

• Jung Jae-il
• Yang Jin-mo
• Han Jin-won

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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.

• What is a motif in film? →
• The best movies of 2019, ranked →
• How to set dress like Bong Joon-ho →

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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Critic’s Pick

‘Parasite’ Review: The Lower Depths Rise With a Vengeance

In Bong Joon Ho’s new film, a destitute family occupies a wealthy household in an elaborate scheme that goes comically — then horribly — wrong.

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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.

Take being the operative word. The other Kims don’t secure their positions as art tutor, housekeeper and chauffeur, they seize them, using lies and charm to get rid of the Parks’ other employees — including a longtime housekeeper (a terrifically vivid Lee Jung Eun) — in a guerrilla incursion executed with fawning smiles. The Parks make it easy (no background checks). Yet they’re not gullible, as Ki-taek believes, but are instead defined by cultivated helplessness, the near-infantilization that money affords. In outsourcing their lives, all the cooking and cleaning and caring for their children, the Parks are as parasitical as their humorously opportunistic interlopers.

Bong’s command of the medium is thrilling. He likes to move the camera, sometimes just to nudge your attention from where you think it should be, but always in concert with his restlessly inventive staging. When, in an early scene, the Kims crowd their superior from the pizza company, their bodies nearly spilling out of the frame, the image both underscores the family’s closeness and foreshadows their collective assault on the Parks. Nothing if not a rigorous dialectician, Bong refuses to sentimentalize the Kims’ togetherness or their poverty. But he does pointedly set it against the relative isolation of the Parks, who don’t often share the same shot much less the same room.

Bong has some ideas in “Parasite,” but the movie’s greatness isn’t a matter of his apparent ethics or ethos — he’s on the side of decency — but of how he delivers truths, often perversely and without an iota of self-serving cant. (He likes to get under your skin, not wag his finger.) He accents the rude comedy of the Kims’ struggle with slyness and precision timing, encouraging your laughter. When the son and daughter can’t locate a Wi-Fi signal — the family has been tapping a neighbor’s — they find one near the toilet (an apt tribute to the internet). And when a cloud of fumigation billows in from outside, an excited Ki-taek insists on keeping the windows open to take advantage of the free insecticide. They choke, you laugh. You also squirm.

The lightly comic tone continues after the Kims begin working for the Parks, despite ripples of unease that develop into riptides. Some of this disquiet is expressed in the dialogue, including through the Kims’ performative subservience, with its studied courtesies and strategic hedging. (Bong shares script credit with Han Jin Won.) The poor family quickly learns what the rich family wants to hear. For their part, Mr. and Mrs. Park (Lee Sun Kyun and Cho Yeo Jeong) speak the language of brutal respectability each time they ask for something (a meal, say) or deploy a metaphor, as when he gripes about people who “cross the line” and smell like “old radishes.”

The turning point comes midway through when the Parks leave on a camping trip, packing up their Range Rover, outdoor projector included. In their absence, the Kims bring out the booze, kick back and take over the house, a break that’s cut short when the old housekeeper returns, bringing a surprise with her. The slapstick becomes more violent, the stakes more naked, the laughs more terrifying and cruel. By that point, you are as comfortably settled in as the Kims; the house is so very pleasant, after all. But the cost of that comfort and those pretty rooms — and the eager acquiescence to the unfairness and meanness they signify — comes at a terrible price.

Rated R for class exploitation and bloody violence. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours and 12 minutes.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Parasite review – searing satire of a family at war with the rich

Members of an unemployed family target a wealthy household in Bong Joon-ho’s superbly written, horribly fascinating comedy-drama

I n all its delicious cruelty and ingenuity, Bong Joon-ho’s satirical suspense thriller Parasite has arrived in the UK from Korea, having won the Palme d’Or in Cannes last year and dominated the connoisseur conversation from then on – at the expense, rightly or wrongly, of every other non-English-language film.

This really is a horribly fascinating film, brilliantly written, superbly furnished and designed, with a glorious ensemble cast put to work in an elegantly plotted nightmare. Its narrative engine hums with the luxurious smoothness of the Mercedes-Benz that one character is fatefully given the chance to drive. In my original review from Cannes , I wondered if the narrative was a little over-extended, but, on a second viewing, I can see how that amplitude of detail is what gives the film its flavour.

Parasite is a scabrous black comedy-slash-farce that resonates beyond its generic limits – a movie about status envy, aspiration, materialism, the patriarchal family unit and the idea of having (or leasing) servants. More than this, it is about the suppressed horror of the overclass for its underlings and its morbid distaste for the smell of people who have to use public transport. The satirical reflex extends to a vision of South and North Korea living together in paranoid, resentful intimacy, and its climax is precipitated by an almost Biblical climate-emergency catastrophe.

The parasites in question are a dodgy unemployed family living together in a scuzzy, stinky basement flat, with the teenage son and daughter periodically roaming around, holding their smartphones up to the ceiling to pinch the non-password-protected wifi of neighbours and nearby businesses. The dad is Ki-taek (a lovely performance from veteran player Song Kang-ho), a laidback loafer married to former track star Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin). The son is Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik), a shiftless young guy who has flunked the university entrance exams; and the daughter is Ki-jung (Park So-dam), a smart, cool customer with an artistic gift for web-based fraud.

One summer, by posing as a college student, Ki-woo gets the chance to tutor the teenage daughter of a very rich family in a spectacularly grand modernist house, owned by business high-flier Mr Park (Lee Sun-kyun). Ki-woo’s student is the demure Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), whose instant crush on him is something Ki-woo does nothing to discourage. The somewhat distraite mistress of the house, Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong), asks if this smart young man might also recommend an art tutor for Da-hye’s negligibly talented kid brother Da-song (Jung Hyun-jun). He passes off his sister as the cousin of a friend and her brazen grifter-sense of when and how to be confident, and even arrogant, bags her the job.

Soon, these wicked kids have cunningly contrived to get the family chauffeur fired and replaced with their dad. They then dislodge the housekeeper Moon-gwang (Lee Jeong-eun) and install their placidly smiling mum. A whole family of cuckoos in a brand new nest, pretending to be strangers to each other. But then the artless little kid points out that they all smell alike – and they smell of poor people.

Parasite is a movie that taps into a rich cinematic tradition of unreliable servants with an intimate knowledge of their employers, an intimacy that easily, and inevitably, congeals into hostility. Joseph Losey’s The Servant invokes a comparable transgression, nightmarishly amplified here by the subterfuge and by the sheer numbers of people getting up close and personal.

Parasite is also in a Korean tradition of pictures such as Kim Ki-young’s classic thriller The Housemaid from 1960, remade in 2010 by Im Sang-soo, and also Park Chan-wook’s servant-class con-trick drama, The Handmaiden . A second viewing of this film also put me in mind of the claustrophobic horror in Park’s Oldboy .

And there is something else, too. The Park family love to play Handel on the music system in their lovely home – the Spietati, io vi giurai aria from his opera Rodelinde. It is so expansive, so airy, caressingly sumptuous and wealthy, and not a million miles from the Care selve arioso from Handel’s Atalanta – listened to by the smug wealthy couple in Michael Haneke’s home-invasion horror Funny Games , before their own appointment with dark destiny.

The home invaders here gaze on their super-rich employers and see themselves in a distorting mirror that pitilessly reveals to them how wretched they are and shows them what could and should be theirs. It is almost a supernatural or sci-fi story: the invasion of the lifestyle snatchers. Parasite gets its toxic tendrils into your skin.

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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).

From ‘Knives Out’ to ‘Parasite’: Why movies are tackling income inequality and class warfare

In a range of fall releases, including “Joker,” “Parasite,” “Hustlers” and “Knives Out,” major movies take on issues of class and income inequality

Oct. 7, 2019

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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‘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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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.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

No foreign-language film has ever opened at the numbers of a new satirical comedy that opened this past weekend. A Korean film called "Parasite" opened to record audiences in New York and LA and expands to other cities Friday. Critic Bob Mondello says no matter what audiences expect, they're likely to be surprised.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: A tale of two families, the Parks, who live in a designer house atop a hill...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONDELLO: ...And the Kims, who live in a grungy basement apartment across town.

MONDELLO: Literally high and low, both physically and in social status, they wouldn't normally meet. But then a friend drops by the Kims' basement with a gift, a big stone that his grandfather claims will bring the family material wealth. This is so metaphorical, says 20-something Kim Ki-woo.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PARASITE")

CHOI WOO-SHIK: (As Kim Ki-woo, speaking Korean).

MONDELLO: His mom is skeptical.

JANG HYE-JIN: (As Kim Chung-sook, speaking Korean).

MONDELLO: Food would have been better, she says. Still, the friend also brings word that the wealthy Park family needs an English tutor for their daughter, and he sets up Ki-woo with an audition for the job.

MONDELLO: Mrs. Park tells him she always sits in on the first lesson.

CHO YEO-JEONG: (As Park Yeon-kyo) If it's OK with you.

MONDELLO: Ki-woo gets the tutoring job, then starts building on what is a really good deal. The Parks pay well, so he introduces his sister - he says she's a friend of a classmate - as an art therapist for their son. Beats folding pizza boxes to earn money or leaving the window open in the Kim apartment when the city fumigates the alley it's on to get free exterminating.

MONDELLO: Money is an iron, says someone. It smooths out the wrinkles - another metaphor, and a clue that the Kim family's scam, which just seems funny at first, is more than it appears. Writer-director Bong Joon-ho never goes for just funny. His sci-fi epic "Snowpiercer," for instance, put the last survivors of a climate disaster on a train and set them to killing each other in a class war. And as the comedy starts curdling in "Parasite," class struggle is again on his mind.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) I'm deadly serious.

MONDELLO: The haves here aren't hateful. They're just insensitive. Mr. Park keeps scrunching up his nose and talking about the stench of poverty. And the have-nots aren't vicious, so much as hapless for a while. And then - well, shouldn't spoil things. Let's just say that by "Parasite's" conclusion, what started out as a comedy of manners has become a furious snarl of rage and his most arresting social satire yet.

I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF JENNY LEWIS SONG, "YOU CAN'T OUTRUN 'EM")

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Review by Brian Eggert November 3, 2019

From their half-basement dwelling, the Kim family looks out a narrow window onto their impoverished neighborhood in Seoul, where passers-by urinate in the street and insect foggers release noxious gases that float into homes. Inside, they dry their socks on a mobile-like hanger and fold pizza boxes for money. When they need to get a Wi-Fi signal, they hold their smartphones in the air and search their underground apartment for a signal by climbing on the toilet. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. With the family’s conditions dire, each of them, the parents and two adult children, search for an edge, which presents itself with the Park family. An upper-middle-class couple with a teenage daughter and a young boy, the Parks live in a modernist house of cold, geometric stone and austere design, elevated in a walled space and a lush, enclosed yard that feels removed from the reality of the outside world. The juxtaposition between the underclass and the advantaged, and the events that entangle these two families in Bong Joon-ho’s brilliant  Parasite , recalls a similar class and genre dynamic as the 1963 Japanese thriller High and Low . That film, directed by Akira Kurosawa, tells the story of a privileged family whose kidnapped son is held for ransom in a poor criminal’s act of class revenge. Bong’s film might be called Low and High , with its perspective situated in the sub-levels, looking up at the disparity between the rich and the less fortunate. Though, the impetus of Parasite ’s class struggle materializes in a far more surprising, unconventional way. 

But before this consideration of Bong’s film continues, a word of warning: After Parasite debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it unanimously won the Palme d’Or, Bong asked that critics not reveal certain story elements. As much as any film, if not more, experiencing this remarkable picture without prior knowledge will enhance your impressions. Consider yourself warned that this assessment will explore the plot of Parasite with detail, less as a betrayal of Bong’s request than a celebration of his intricate, exhilarating film, whose many layers keep unfolding into the final shot. However, it should be noted, as ever, that criticism and review aggregators tend to set expectations, and the less you know about this film and its themes beforehand, the better. With little or no knowledge of what Parasite entails before seeing it, I was nonetheless drawn to the material because of its filmmaker—a master at blending genres and tones into a sophisticated cinema. Bong’s multifaceted approach is, to borrow a repeated line from a character in his latest, “so metaphorical,” reflecting the intricate and entangled nature of his characters and, to a greater extent, all human beings. So while seeing it unspoiled is ideal, seeing it again may be essential. 

At the film’s center are the two families, the Kims and the Parks, but as suggested, Bong aligns the viewer with the Kims’ perspective. We understand their motivations and family dynamics, whereas the Parks have a curious, if not morbid undercurrent to their lives. The Kims’ paterfamilias, Ki-taek, played by the great South Korean actor Song Kang-ho, spends his days with his family in their cramped basement abode, barely eking out an existence yet never overwhelmed by their situation. But their fortunes change when the son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), learns of a chance to work as a well-paid English tutor for the Parks’ teenage daughter, Da-hye (Jung Zi-so). When the opportunity presents itself, Ki-woo ensures his employment by enlisting his sister to forge college documents, while Ki-taek and his wife, Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), look proudly on their children who have learned to survive with ingenuity and criminal cunning. Of course, Ki-woo lands the job after interviewing with the gullible Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong), who insists on calling him “Kevin” in the way some slave owners would rename their servants. Once he’s established, Ki-woo learns that the Parks’ youngest, a rambunctious boy, needs help becoming the next Basquiat. Ki-woo makes up a story about so-and-so who knows a well-respected art teacher, a role to be played by his sister, Ki-jung (Park So-dam). Before long, Ki-woo and Ki-jung have convinced the Parks to hire their entire family, while the Parks remain unaware of their true identities. But “convinced” is the wrong word. The Kims lie, cajole, and manipulate to secure Ki-taek as the chauffeur of Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun) and Chung-sook as the Park family’s maid. Rather than identifying with Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), the longtime housekeeper, out of lower-class solidarity, they’re happy to exploit her allergy to peaches to convince Mrs. Park that she has tuberculosis—a condition that quickly gets her fired. Setting up the former employees to sabotage them, the Kims stick to an elaborate plan, but their scheme is not to rob the Parks or to murder and replace them as doppelgängers, but to earn a lucrative income. At one point, Ki-taek observes that fifty college graduates compete for a lousy security guard post, so what chance does he have until he takes such a job? It’s as though one pilot fish has convinced the shark to eat his predecessor in order to replace him. Their cutthroat actions are those of a capitalist society that has made everyone desperate to accumulate more wealth, to survive and prosper, even if it means sacrificing your morality or willfully ignoring the humanity of others to attain it. Thus, the lower classes have no choice but to engage in a parasitic relationship with the more prosperous. But opportunistic as the Kims may seem, the Parks, too, are parasites, feeding off the less fortunate to supply themselves with an outsourced lifestyle. 

But then, there is  a troubling secret beneath the surface of the Park home. A sudden turn in the film arrives around the midpoint in Parasite , when the Parks leave on a camping trip and the Kims unwind in the extravagant, minimalist house. They drink expensive booze and chow-down on snacks, feeling “cozy” in their new space. But the return of the former housekeeper upsets their homey little scene. She has not returned for revenge or anything so obvious; rather, she has come to reclaim her husband, who has long evaded debt collectors by hiding in a frightening concrete sub-basement, constructed in secret by the original starchitect-owner, Namgoong, as a shelter in case of an attack by North Korea. Another parasite, Chung-sook’s husband, has lived down there for years, surviving on secret deliveries of food and supplies by his wife. The idea cannot help but bring to mind Jordan Peele’s Us from earlier this year, where a forgotten world of underground doubles emerges from below to take over the world they were supposed to control. Although, Bong’s film situates itself in the real world, where the chasm between the rich and poor continues to extend. The approach is no less thrilling, however, as the Kim family must scramble to prevent the former housekeeper from exposing them, while the space below the house serves a kind of situational timebomb.  

Bong’s deft touch as a filmmaker never forgets the emotional, purely entertaining stakes, though his formal skill is that of a mathematical technician who always knows where to place the camera. Parasite ’s careful ratcheting of tension shifts the material into a Hitchcockian suspenser, where the Kims attempt to keep another secret from the Parks—they’ve now confined the housekeeper and her husband in the sub-basement. Hong Kyung-pyo’s cinematography glides the camera around the elaborate sets, built by production designer Lee Ha-jun, so convincing in their construction that the viewer would assume the locations were real. Instead, Bong’s vision is at once intentional and chambered, each camera movement and angle the approach of a cinematic tactician. Subtle, calculated imagery such as eyes peering out from a stairway or the Kim family hiding beneath a large table as the Parks sleep on a nearby couch leave the viewer in breathless suspense, while they’re also “so metaphorical.” Likewise, so is Bong’s script, as when Mr. Park compliments his new driver for not “crossing the line”—an imaginary divide between the classes, which Bong indicates in visual space. And while often such elaborate premeditation can result in a feeling of formal coldness, Parasite develops its characters with humor and humanity in a way that recalls Alfred Hitchcock or Brian De Palma. 

Though Bong calls Parasite a “tragicomedy” and layers the material with lively humor and his signature tonal playfulness, it’s also his most furious and most fatalistic picture to date. But limiting this film to any genre definition defies the uniqueness of Bong’s filmmaking—at once laugh-out-loud funny and capable of inducing gasps, delightfully engaging yet unflinching in its social critique. Still, Parasite is Bong’s most compassionate and harrowing study of contemporary powerlessness. His other films have featured characters capable of improving their class conditions by some small, hopeful measure—the mourning father in The Host who adopts a homeless child; the escape from the train in Snowpiercer ; the survival of the superpig in Okja . But the final moments here articulate Bong’s sense that the economic hierarchies that constitute the foundation of a capitalistic society will remain in place. Moreover, Bong’s other films have handled these themes in the context of genre-inflected worlds, elaborate and comparatively escapist, but with Parasite, he confronts our modern-day dystopia that, if portrayed in a film decades ago, might not look so different than a work of science-fiction. The deep passion he feels for his subject enriches every frame of this outstanding film, a work of stealth and vision marked by its melancholy and rage.  

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82 Parasite (2019)

Class, colonialism, and gender in parasite (2019).

By Colson Legras

Throughout the history of cinema, especially in our modern, information-saturated, on-demand world, the English language has dominated the film industry and all forms of media at large. This has made the average person prone to becoming overly accustomed to a predominantly English-language media environment at the cost of exposing them to works from languages and cultures outside the Anglosphere’s influence. As a result, it is very common for English-speaking viewers to have more difficulty connecting or relating to stories that aren’t in the English language and require subtitles. This too often leads to a clunky and disconnected viewing experience.

The 2019 Korean genre-hybrid film ​Parasite ​ breaks free from those typical restraints by offering a compelling and captivating narrative experience combined with a universally relatable message of the injustice of increasing class and wealth inequality in the world, while also touching on issues of gender and colonialism. More than anything else, the film presents its social message in a way that seamlessly translates across language and cultural barriers thanks to its masterful editing, mise-en-scene, cinematography, music, acting, and writing. Interspersed throughout the film are countless implementations of these elements of film form to illustrate the differences between two South Korean families, how their interactions highlight the power dynamic between them, and the distinct ways they each interact with society due to these differences.

Parasite ​entered the public consciousness among growing awareness and frustration with the rise of wealth inequality and its perverse effects on governments, individuals, and society as a whole, which if anything, have only gotten worse since the pandemic. The film echoes the grievances many people hold with capitalism, poverty, and the existing social order. Its setting in South Korea is relevant, although not integral, to the films’ overall purpose of portraying inequality and social mobility in a very cynical and pessimistic light. In her review of the film, The New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg calls this approach “bracing” due to its raw and honest presentation of these themes and stark contrast with typical sensibilities about class distinction and social mobility in America, which tend to depict differences in social class in either a positive light or as a necessary evil (Goldberg).

Bong Joon-ho, the director and co-writer of ​ Parasite ​, is no stranger to depictions of class differences on screen. As film critic Mark Kermode points out in his review in ​ The Guardian ​, Bong’s back catalog of films, including ​Memories of Murder, The Host , ​and ​ Snowpiercer , is well-known for not-so-subtle commentaries on wealth, power, and authority (Kermode). Parasite ’s rendition of this class dynamic focuses on two Seoul families: the Kims, a poor and desperate family living in a basement apartment, and their goal of infiltrating and each becoming employed by the Parks, a very wealthy family led by the head of a successful tech company. Bong in several instances highlights the two families’ differences in wealth and social standing using a variety of methods. The first instance of this occurs very early in the film when we see the Kim family search all around their small apartment for a stray wifi signal (2:55). Most of the camera shots in this scene are medium to close-up shots meant to invoke a claustrophobic feeling from being in the tiny basement apartment, as well as to get a more intimate feel with the characters.

Mise-en-scene is very important in this scene as well, as we see just how small, cramped, and messy the Kim family’s apartment is, which is indicative of their social class. This can be contrasted with the portion of the film revealing the Park residence, which uses wide establishing shots (13:00) and camera panning around the entirety of the property (13:45) to give a sense of spaciousness, privacy, and pristineness, characteristics more associated with the upper-class. Kermode also mentions in his review the use of staircases and escalators to mirror the ascent and descent of the social ladder. During the Kim family’s infiltration into the rich Park household, the Kims’ father Ki-taek is shown ascending an escalator with the Parks’ mother (41:00), showing the Kim family’s ascent into a higher level of class and opportunity. In the second half of the film as their plan starts to fall apart, they are forced to return home in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm, scaling down several flights of stairs in the pouring rain (1:33:10). Using a series of wide shots, the Kim family descending the flights of stairs reflects their descending of the social hierarchy as their position in the Park household, and in turn their economic security, is compromised (Kermode). Another example that stands out is the difference in the diets of the Parks and Kims. The top-down camera angles and jump-cut edits at (39:50, 40:25) contrast the fresh fruit eaten at the Park household with the cheap, greasy pizza that the Kims eat together. Editing is also used effectively to highlight the difference in abundance and material wealth, when the Parks’ huge walk-in closet and wide selection of high-end clothes is juxtaposed with the Kims choosing from a pile of secondhand charity clothes (1:43:00).

With any story of class differences come the varying levels of power that the members of each class have, and in fact, the amount of power one has in society is a defining characteristic of one’s social class. In ​ Parasite , the power of the Park family is evident throughout the film, as is the Kim family’s lack thereof. One of the ways Bong Joon-ho emphasizes the power that comes with elevated social status is through physical elevation. For example, the Parks have a housekeeper who lives at the residence with them and will do any chore and favor desired by the Parks on a whim, and is both physically and financially subservient to them. Her room is shown as being on the first floor (44:30), while each of the members of the Park family all sleep on the top floor, showing their position above the working-class housekeeper socially and literally. This is also echoed later in the film when it is revealed the housekeeper’s husband has been living beneath the house in a secret bunker. The Kim family’s overwhelming lack of power is on display as well. They find it difficult to persuade even a pizza shop worker to hire Ki-woo as a part-time worker (5:20), even as they all surround her. With a medium shot that gradually zooms in on the pizza worker, this is also an example of how the limited amount of power the Kim family does have is from their strength in numbers and ability to coordinate and work together, which is further explored later in the film.

As the narrative of ​ Parasite ​progresses, so does the tension between the Kim family and the Park family, as well as between them and the housekeeper and her husband. As this conflict plays out in the foreground, a conflict rooted in class stirs up in the background, leading up to an explosive conclusion. Throughout the film, the Parks, particularly the patriarch Mr. Park, draw distinctions between themselves and their ilk and those below them on the totem pole, and discriminate based on those class distinctions. He emphasizes the value of subordinates who don’t “cross the line” (43:40) by involving themselves too much in his business or positioning themselves as his peers. In another scene, Mr. Park distastefully recounts to his wife the pungent smell which emanates from Ki-taek and “people who ride the subway” (1:28:40). This scene is particularly illuminating into the differences between the classes which the Kims and Parks are a part of and the attitudes and resentments they hold towards each other. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are shown lying together on their couch, the camera moves down to a low shot to show the Kims under a table within earshot (1:27:40). This repeats the allegory of representing class with one literally being physically above the other, while emphasizing the powerlessness of the Kims beneath them who are forced to stay silent and undetected.

The metaphor of smell to illustrate revulsion towards lower-class people is exhibited again in a later scene, when the Park family is preparing for an impromptu birthday party for their son, Da-song. The mother runs errands while being driven around by Ki-taek. In part due to the flood of sewage water which ravaged their home the night before, his smell was particularly noticeable to Mrs. Park, which elicited visible disgust from her. At the party, a dramatic and hectic scene played out in which the housekeeper’s husband, Geun-se, goes on a violent rampage which, among other things, results in himself being fatally stabbed. While trying to reach his car keys which became lodged under Geun-se, Mr. Park attempts to grab them but is visibly taken aback and disgusted by his smell (1:54:20). He also completely ignores both Ki-jung and Ki-woo, who are both bleeding profusely and need immediate medical attention, instead prioritizing the unconscious Da-song. This is emblematic of the apathy that Mr. Park has for those from a lower social class. In retaliation for his contempt and carelessness, Ki-taek spontaneously stabs Mr. Park in the chest, killing him.

Although the film is primarily a critique of class stratification and inequality, there certainly are other elements present. For instance, gender relations and roles are relevant to many of the characters’ identities, such as the Park’s daughter Da-hye and her ensuing relationship with the significantly older Ki-woo. The roles the female characters generally take on in the film when it comes to family life are relevant as well. The members of the Kim family all seem to consider themselves as equals, no matter the gender. A very insular and close-knit family, they prefer to cooperate and work together, each taking on a roughly equal role in the household. It isn’t until they immerse themselves in the household of the Parks and their upper-class environment that they begin to replicate gendered norms, such as the mother becoming the new housekeeper. The Park family, on the other hand, is much more patriarchal. The mother stays at home and takes care of the kids, while the father is the sole breadwinner of the household. He also seems to give preferential treatment to his younger son as opposed to his high school-aged daughter, only ever interacting with her to scold her. This depiction of gender in the film is representative of the notion that higher social class and wealth are often closely tied with male power in society and the fact that the higher up the social ladder you go, the more patriarchal it generally becomes. This is backed by data as well; CNBC’s Zameena Maija pointed out that in 2018, only 4.8% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies were female (Maija).

However, what strikes me as a particularly interesting element intertwined with the film’s themes of class and capitalism that lies in the background of the film is racial: the odd focus on Native Americans on the part of Da-song. He has a strange obsession with Native American tropes, carrying a toy bow and arrow, wearing a headdress, and camping outside in a teepee. His parents even theme his birthday party around them. Native Americans obviously don’t have a significant place among Korean race relations, so it seems odd to include in a Korean blockbuster film. I hadn’t even given this part of the film a second thought until it had been pointed out to me by a friend. Its symbolism becomes clearer upon noticing that every time that Da-song’s toys are brought up, his mother mentions that she “ordered it from the U.S.” (18:40, 1:27:20). The specificity of that phrase suggests it’s much more than a nod towards the perceived quality of American-manufactured goods. It seems to be a broader commentary on colonialism and imperialism, and how the United States expanded and exported these behaviors and ideologies along with capitalism during its 19th century westward expansion in Native American territory, as well as its postwar rise to global superpower status. This is specifically relevant to South Korea, which owes much of its existence and success to its alliance to U.S. political and military interests and adoption of neoliberal economic policy. In the same way that the Parks imported the teepee and bow and arrow as consumer products from America, South Korea imported America’s capitalistic, stratified social order, in addition to its commodification of cultures like we see with Da-song’s obsession with Native Americans. The climactic birthday party scene explores this concept further. Mr. Park and Ki-taek, both in Native headdresses, are about to surprise Da-song by pretending to ambush Ki-jung with tomahawks and “battle” with Da-song (1:48:00). This choice to portray Native Americans not as a group of people to be understood, but as a vague, faceless idea of antagonistic, warmongering savages is deliberate. It reflects the broader history of Native Americans on film and their legacy in general: the tendency of other more powerful groups to determine their stories and fate for them, rather than letting them determine it for themselves. In replicating this dynamic, the film does not endorse it; rather, it critiques it through imitation.

Social messaging aside, the film is also extremely engaging and enthralling and stands on its own even without the subtext of critique of inequality. All that said, I would instantly recommend this film to anyone, regardless of their interest in foreign films or desire to read subtitles, because in the case of ​Parasite , it easily ranks as one of the greatest films of the decade.

If there’s one thing ​ Parasite ​does best of all, it’s bringing attention to a pressing social issue in a way that dissolves cultural and language boundaries and reaches a wide audience without compromising its cinematic complexity. It achieves this goal in a variety of ways; realizing its wider audience likely isn’t fluent in Korean, its acting, writing, and subtitling allows the viewer to effortlessly immerse themselves in the film’s world, making the cultural setting and language function more as a backdrop than as an obstacle. Most importantly, ​ Parasite ’s main takeaways, that wealth inequality is the result of factors largely outside one’s control, that class differences aren’t totally earned, and social mobility is a bygone dream for many, all have the potential to resonate with audiences from all cultural backgrounds. This is at the heart of why the film is so impactful both emotionally and culturally.

Parasite ​is uniquely significant for several reasons, many of which have more to do with public perception than the actual filmmaking process. The biggest reason this film is relevant to the public, myself included, is largely because of deep dissatisfaction with the effects of social stratification and a capitalistic culture on society. In particular, Hollywood, with its endless sequels, remakes, and the concentration of production rights into the hands of fewer and fewer media companies, is certainly a prime example of this. Filmgoers have noticed, and ​ Parasite​ , both as a foreign film which turns genre conventions upside-down and as a critique of the typical cultural assumptions that Hollywood helps perpetuate, is a breath of fresh air from the fumes of Hollywood. The fact that, despite its language barrier, the film easily plowed through the Oscars to receive Best Picture and became many fans’ favorite film of the year proves that its idea of class inequality being arbitrary, unmerited, and unjust is resonating with more and more people each day. In many ways, ​Parasite​and the success it has spawned represent a massive ongoing paradigm shift in how we talk about issues like class, inequality, and the film industry: one that we’ll be feeling the ripple effects from for decades to come.

Goldberg, Michelle. “Class War at the Oscars.” ​The New YorkTimes, 11 Feb. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/opinion/parasite-movie-oscar-inequality.html.

Kermode, Mark. “Parasite Review – a Gasp-Inducing Masterpiece.” ​The Guardian​, 10 Feb. 2020, www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/09/parasite-review-bong-joon-ho-tragicomic-master piece.

Mejia, Zameena. “Just 24 Female CEOs Lead the Companies on the 2018 Fortune 500-Fewer than Last Year.” CNBC​,​ 21 May 2018, www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/2018s-fortune-500-companies-have-just-24-female-ceos.html.

Difference, Power, and Discrimination in Film and Media: Student Essays Copyright © by Students at Linn-Benton Community College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Parasyte: The Grey’ On Netflix, About A Woman Sharing Her Brain With An Alien Parasite

Where to stream:.

• Parasyte: The Grey

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘UFO Factory’ On Hulu, Where A Con Artist Tries To Lure UFO Believers To A Tiny Mexican Village

Stream it or skip it: ‘files of the unexplained’ on netflix, a docuseries about encounters with aliens, ghosts and other unexplained phenomena, ‘3 body problem’ season 1 finale recap: “wallfacer”, ‘3 body problem’ episode 7 recap: “only advance” .

We’ve seen many shows and movies that have the “aliens among us” theme, where invaders take human form and hide in plain sight. In a new Korean sci-fi series, the aliens are in the form of parasites that eat the brains of the human hosts they invade. Sounds pleasant, right?

PARASYTE: THE GREY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man curses as he chats during a game on his computer. Then we see a bunch of pods falling through the clouds and to the earth.

The Gist: Out of the pods come tiny slithering worms. We follow one of the worms as it slithers through the stands at an EDM dance festival. It finally goes into a VIP room and inserts itself into the ear of a drunk audience member. At first he goes lifeless. But he then wakes up and walks out into the crowd. Suddenly, his head opens up, big tentacles come out, and those tentacles start attacking the crowd.

One hour before, Jeong Su-in (Jeon So-nee) is working as a cashier in a supermarket, and she comes across a belligerent customer, the same guy who was cursing while playing a video game. After their interaction, he mutters that he could kill everyone there. When she leaves at the end of her shift, the man follows her scooter in his car. In a remote area, he hits the scooter, sending her flying, then he gets out with a knife and starts stabbing her. One of the pods is nearby, and the slithering parasite goes into the ear of the badly injured Su-in. Suddenly, a tentacle shoots out and kills the knife-wielding perpetrator.

Later, we see senior police detective Cheol-min (Kwon Hae-hyo) being briefed at a local hospital. Su-in, despite being stabbed multiple times, seems to be OK; the stab wounds are healed to the point where they are perceived as old injuries. The perpetrator is dead, though how he was killed is a mystery. Cheol-min knows Su-in; he worked the case two decades ago when 10-year-old Su-in called the police on her abusive father. Despite the state of her wounds, she absolutely positive she was stabbed earlier that night, because she thought that she’s suffering through yet another misfortune in her life.

A few months later, we see Seol Kang-woo (Koo Kyo-hwan), who works as a hitman for various organized crime gangs, goes back to his family’s apartment after a hit doesn’t work out. His mom is acting strangely and his sister is gone; she’s left behind a flyer about some sort of church revival.

At this point, the parasitic aliens have found their human hosts, and they sense each other’s presence. They are forming a community in order to survive, with the symbol being the same one on that church flyer. Most of the other human hosts have been completely taken over by the parasites, but Su-in hasn’t. However, when she’s followed by two people after work, she gets cornered in a junkyard. Kang-woo, looking for his sister, happens on the scene, and when the two parasitic hosts find Su-in and communicate with the parasite inside of her, that parasite uses Kang-woo to give Su-in some information.

We also see that a task force, called “Team Grey,” has been put together to fight these parasites, led by Choi Jun-kyung (Lee Jung-hyun). When she briefs officers at the Namil Police Station, including Cheo-min, about the parasites, she presents a captured parasite host as a “Hunting Dog”; it’s been captured and trapped in a suit and helmet, and its there to flush out the other parasites via the frequency they put out to detect each other. Meanwhile, Su-in learns from the parasite inside of her why they co-exist and what the circumstances are when it takes over her consciousness.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Parasyte: The Grey is reminiscent of other aliens-in-human-form shows like V .

Our Take: Parasyte: The Grey was adapted by Yeon Sang-ho and Ryu Yong-jae from the manga Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaaki. It keeps things relatively simple, given it’s an alien-invasion story that basically comes close to being an apocalyptic tale. For now, the characters that serve as parasite hosts are generally nameless; what makes them stand out is the form their tentacles take when they open up their heads; one looks suspiciously like the demogorgon from Stranger Things .

Where the story is focused is mostly on four people: Su-in, Jun-kyung, Cheo-min and Kang-woo. Su-in is the key to this story; because the parasite in her took energy to heal her wounds, it couldn’t take over her brain, leading to Su-in becoming a mutant. She’s the hope that the human race won’t be obliterated by these tentacle-waggers, because at some point, she and the monster inside of her will learn to figure out how each other works.

The monster already knows that the presence of a mutant won’t be tolerated by the aliens that have fully inhabited their hosts, and as far as we know, Su-in is the only mutant that exists. So, just to ensure their mutual survival, we bet that Su-in will learn how to avoid and then kill the monsters that she encounters.

It’s that humanity that will make Parasyte more than just a story of humans losing a battle of attrition to the aliens. Will the series end up being a Walking Dead -style post-apocalyptic tale where the number of survivors shrinks and society eventually breaks down? Maybe. But we hope that part of the story either doesn’t come or is held off for as long as possible. We want to see Su-in figure out her new normal and band together with people like Cheo-min and Kang-woo. It’s fairly obvious that her adversaries will be the other aliens as well as Jun-kyung, and that chess match will also be interesting to watch.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After getting information about the alien that’s inside of her, Su-in sits in a bus shelter, screams, and sighs.

Sleeper Star: We’ve seen Kwon Hae-hyo in a ton of K-dramas, and we know he’ll bring his standard world weariness to lead detective Cheol-min.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Simply put, you’re a mutant, OK?” Kang-woo says to Su-in.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Parasyte: The Grey has enough action to hold viewers’ interest, but the story of Su-in’s mutant existence is also what’s going to keep us watching.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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Parasyte: The Grey

Where to watch.

Watch Parasyte: The Grey with a subscription on Netflix.

Cast & Crew

Jeon So-nee

Jung Soo-in

Koo Kyo-hwan

Seol Kang-woo

Lee Jung-hyun

Choi Joon-kyung

Kwon Hae-hyo

Kim In-kwon

Yeon Sang-ho

Popular TV on Streaming

Series info.