Parasite Review

Parasite is a phenomenal film, and I can see why it took home 4 Oscars for Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Original Screenplay, and most notably, Best Picture. This is huge because it is the first international film to ever win Best Picture. And it’s understandable why!

This film is so intricately cut, and everything on a technical level alone has so much attention to detail. The sets were well used by contrasting the Kim’s small cramped apartment with the Park family’s wide open, beautiful, and luxurious home. I also appreciated how they used objects as storytelling devices that pushed the plot along. To be clear, I am not saying that this movie uses macguffins. What I’m saying is that it’s an important detail that these characters interact with objects in ways where the film makes it clear that there is some significance to it. The perfect example being the rock Ki-Woo receives from his college friend, and its symbolism of his own hope that, things will be better for him, and his family someday. Overall, this is an amazing, and beautiful film, and I cannot stress that enough. I would highly recommend that you all give this one a watch!

*Spoilers Ahead*

Early on, it’s apparent that this film is about classism, and the lengths that some people will go to escape poverty. In this film, we as an audience are being challenged to sympathize with the Kim family, despite their manipulative actions. The whole film is basically about two desperate families who cling to a much richer one like a… parasite if you will. And eventually they are forced to deal with the consequences. Whether it be them finding a squatter in a basement and having to tie him up, so he doesn’t tell the family the truth, and then getting nearly killed by that same man later because of that. Or the fact that the father of the Kim family must live trapped in that same basement, after he kills an innocent man for continuously insulting his smell, a smell he has because of the conditions he’s been living in for his whole life. The lower class just can’t seem to catch a break.

A lot of people are forced into making a lot of manipulative, and deceitful decisions. But at the same time, it’s a movie where you do feel bad for them when the life-altering consequences happen to them as a direct result of them making those decisions. Like I said before, several people die in this film. All of which can be traced back to the reason they are doing it in the first place, common class struggles. Nobody wants to be impoverished, and live in a bunker indefinitely, but like Ki-taek told his son, you can have a plan, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work. Life isn’t fair. But even with this grim theme to have the entire movie revolve around, there is still a glimmer of hope at the end, that one day things will get better for this family, even after everything they lost along the way.