User Reviews

I am remarkably stingy with my 10/10 ratings. I'll be the first person to acknowledge this. Of the roughly 2600 titles I've rated on here, only 34 have a 10. Parasite is one of them. If this isn't a masterpiece, then I don't know what is.

I'm going to keep it vague on the plot-front, because I didn't know anything about it going in, and was really excited to see it progress and unfold in satisfying, unexpected ways.

What I will say is that this film, more than just about any other I've seen, put me through so many different emotional states during its 132-minute runtime, and did so without ever feeling muddled or tonally inconsistent. Parts of this movie were hilarious. Parts were heartbreaking. Other parts were insanely suspenseful (I'm honestly not sure if I've felt this close to the edge of my seat since the final season of Breaking Bad, way back in 2013).

And it does all this while being perfectly paced, beautifully directed, and amazingly acted from every single member of its cast. All the characters are understandable and sympathetic to some degree; the amount of conflict, drama and tension derived from a narrative with no clear heroes and villains is staggering. You come to care for just about all of them.

I'm stumped to come up with any flaws for this movie. And sure, I've seen many movies that are hard to fault, but it's rare that a movie appeals to me on a gut level and excites me to this degree while also being so close to technically perfect. It's extremely entertaining, thoroughly moving in so many different ways, and as icing on the cake there's a ton of social commentary and some heavy themes to chew on once the movie's over (and this one's not going to leave my head for a while, I can tell).

Catch this one when you can and believe the hype. Joon-Ho Bong has made many great films (and so far no bad one's), but this even manages to stand head and shoulders above all the others.

When it comes time to consider what the best film of the 2010s was, this one will surely be up there.

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that contained as many genres as 'Parasite'. The movie starts out almost like an 'Ocean's Eleven' heist film and then expands into a comedy, mystery, thriller, drama, romance, crime and even horror film. It really did have everything and it was strikingly good at all of them too.

I love a film that respects its audience. There are so many details in this movie that are crucially important and yet the film trusts its audience to notice them and acknowledge them without ramming them down our throats. There are a lot of layers to this film and I suspect for this reason its rewatch-ability factor will be very high.

The film was incredibly entertaining too. I can't think of a boring scene in this movie and yet on the surface for large parts of the film you would say not a lot is happening, at least in terms of action. Fascinating characters and brilliant dialogue are what create this. I had a great time with 'Parasite' and I think most that give it a chance will too.

A poor family see an opportunity whenever their son starts tutoring English for a wealthy family - if they can engineer it, they can each get one of the jobs within the household. This is the basis for a film that starts out as a sort of con story, seeing the rich family as the 'marks'. As it plays out though, it keeps this assumption in the background, eating at the viewer as an idea, before then making it very relevant in the closing aspects of the plot. Between the start and then, the focus is on the various twists and turns of the drama itself. In this the film engages, and I found it easy to engage with it on the basis of what was happening.

The later develops do work better though when viewed in the context of the social aspect. There are lots of clever critics that can talk to you about the meaning and hidden depths of commentary from the film; for me the key one was the falseness of the 'con' itself. Although the family mock the gullibility of the rich family, it is not like they are stealing money from them, or somehow dislodging them from their position in life - no, they are just providing labour to them in exchange of comparatively low wages. They are doing this at the expense of other working people just trying to keep a job, and the rich family could probably not care less about the 'truth' as long as their needs continue to be met. This aspect is important for the direction of the later stages of the film, and adds sense to what happens and why, but it is interesting in and of itself. Technically the film looks great, and the director builds mood and tone well. Performances are strong across all the cast, but the turn from Song Kang Ho probably was my favourite as he was the most subtle and had the most space to shift across the running time.

There is a lot of talk for Oscar recognition, but it is a handsome, clever film and the timing in the year is right - I don't see it being the first foreign language film to win best picture, but this is more to do with the system than with the film. Regardless of awards or not, it is an engaging drama, with unusual developments, and built on top of an intelligent social aspect which links well to the direction of the narrative.

In a meritocracy, success and fortune are reserved for those who deserve it--those who develop solid plans according to their talents and abilities and who execute those plans through hard work and determination. Anyone can rise to the top, and for some lucky Cinderella, plucked from the cinders and gussied up in gowns, the meritocracy represents the heights of perfect egalitarian society: "I started with nothing and ended up with everything I ever desired; you, too, can achieve you dreams, if only you try."

The promise of unobstructed sunshine at the top of the mountain becomes justification for bitter competition, backstabbing, deceit, and callousness. You climb the crooked ladder until you make it to the straight one, and then, perhaps, when you at last feel secure, you can afford to be kind and confident and generous. "It's easy to be nice when you're rich," the mother in this film (Jang Hye-jin) at one point observes.

But it's a very long and very crooked ladder, and sometimes the rungs give out beneath your grip, and sometimes they've been dangerously greased by those who climbed before you, and sometimes the ladder itself is simply kicked down--either by those above you or, just as often, by those staring up from the ground below. There are a lot of people trying to climb that one ladder.

But in a meritocracy, you can't blame the ladder or the other people trying to climb it. Nor can you blame the fact that all the good stuff is kept so many stories up instead of down at the ground where everyone can easily reach it. No, you must blame yourself. You should have tread more carefully. You should have climbed more quickly. You should have used a firmer and more precise grip, anticipated disasters, and known just when to leap. If you fail in a meritocracy, it's all your fault. You should have tried harder. Better luck next time.

Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik), the young man who is the main character of PARASITE, several times refers to "metaphors," and the film itself is, of course, a metaphor. On a surface level, viewers are treated to a very thrilling, engaging, well-paced and well-plotted crime story. At all times, however, bubbling up from beneath the slick surface of this genre film, there are deeply personal, meaningful truths that should resonate with almost any viewer. These insights are rarely foregrounded. They are so subtly interwoven, in fact, that if you're like me, you may be completely surprised when the final shots of the film roll and you realize that you are emotionally devastated by the intimate, humanist story you've just witnessed. Bong Joon-ho's filmmaking is so extraordinary here that he'll make you fully invested in the lives of his characters without you even realizing he's done so.

I want to avoid spoilers here, but suffice it to say that PARASITE is a masterpiece--beautifully lensed, enthrallingly edited, superbly acted, and intimately involving.

South Korea has a population that is one sixth the size of the United States, and that population is stacked into skyscrapers in an area slightly smaller than the state of Kentucky. Higher education is widespread, so parents with means try to make their children stand above the pack by hiring them tutors and signing them up for extracurriculars and afterschool programs. I lived in Korea once, and the children I taught there were sometimes engaged in learning ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week--public school, English-immersion private school, piano class, soccer team, taekwondo, math camp, chess club, and so on. I routinely worked sixty to seventy hours a week on salary, but at bars I would meet young men my age who were expected to work far more than that, who slept at their desks so that they did not need to pry themselves from work for too long. As the father (Song Kang-ho) in the film at one point says, this is a country where fifty young men with college degrees apply for a mere security guard job. One can't afford not to struggle.

The themes of this story are not just localized to Korea, however. They are the story of global capitalism, and the specter of American materialism (and imperialism; note the "Indians") looms heavily over the film. Meritocracy makes cannibals of us all. It's nice to dream, and sometimes the dreamers who plan and struggle well enough can indeed climb out of the basement and into the sunshine, and how nice an ending it is when they do. But the film also makes it clear that sometimes all that planning and dreaming may be, maybe, just whims and fancy. More often, it seems, our pipe dreams are content to leave us with nothing more than the whiff of spewed sewage.

This movie is a gosh darn masterpiece. It will make you belly laugh, it will chill you to the bone, and it will make you shed a tear. This movie will stay with you long after the credits are over.

If you plan on watching this movie, AVOID SPOILERS AT ALL COSTS.

The most original film of 2019 and it is wickedly funny and darkly disturbing all at the same time. The narrative and the actors were excellent. One of the better endings of a movie in quite a while. Class warfare at its best.

Usually I don't read reviews before seeing a film. This one, however, I did, and happily so. First of all, it was good to know what cinema in Korea is all about. We need to shed our cultural biases, including "how" to make films. This had a very clever plot and an engaging group of characters. The title, I assume, means the principle figures have managed to infest a body and then use it to sustain themselves. I hope to see more from this director in the future.

This is a well written and well perfomed original film. With a lot of repetitive cinema these day i felt this was something new. I felt connected and engaged with the character throughout the film. There are several well directed tense moments throughout the film. A popular topic of class struggled well portrayed. Its always nice to see foreign language films having worldwide success.

As a film about a family imposing on another, and keeping dark secrets hidden beneath the surface, Parasite achieves what Jordan Peele set out to do with Us: tell a multi-layered story in a widely entertaining manner, but without sacrificing the believability of its central narrative.

That's not to say that Us is an ineffective film by any means, but when it comes to crafting weighty social commentaries under the guise of lighter fare, writer-director Bong Joon-ho is in a class of his own.

The film follows a lower-class South Korean family as they slowly integrate themselves in the lives of an upper-class family and their lavish household. As their entanglement is spun out of a web of deceit, the lowly family find themselves skating on thin ice when it comes to keeping up appearances.

It's a twisty satire on social-economic disparities in South Korean society that swings broadly in tone, and sometimes threatens to tip over the edge, but never feels less than meticulously calculated in its tonal shifts.

However, to reveal anything more about the story would be to take away from the overall experience, as each act is marked by a major plot twist or revelation that keeps the film one step ahead of the viewer at all times. Go in blind if you can and expect an unforgettable ride.

This is a movie about a class struggle in South Korea, like what movie "Us" attempts to do but done properly. It is a stark reminder of what true living standards for most South Koreans look like, and its realism is very painful. Few are aware of the fact that up to the 1980s, South Korea was in fact more impoverished than North Korea, and it was only late that the situation reversed with famines of the 90s etc, but many people still live miserable lives, and situation is very similar to that in China, where a few got gloriously rich but the urban masses still live in bug infested cheap dwellings.

Some crafty members of this underclass manage to con contemptuous rich man into employing them as his servants. For many Asians smell is a way to express utter contempt, and this is often directed against the white people, who, being able to process milk, smell "like butter" and are seen in rac ist light as unclean, but the same rac ist contempt is directed towards the poor. The poor accept these valuations and fight for the crumbles, like roaches in the dark, but in life and death situations, resentment might boil up and the contempt might cost the rich their empty heads.

The movie paints a sad picture of modern East Asian societies, with many subtle points, criticizes their culture and emulation of the America, with a few cruel but precise strokes. The sheer talent of the Korean filmmaker, but also the fact that West likes movies from foreign countries that are self bashing, allowing the worst condescension rooted in colonialism that failed miserably in East Asia to thrive, one more reason to cheer this slightly overrated movie.

Well written and performed also technically shines cinematography & bgm are too good and there's not even a single lag it's perfectly edited. Probably the best experience in recent times. Its pure art resembles the modern society the emotions they had shelved are insanely exceptional a layered masterpiece. If you like dark thrillers then you shouldn't miss Mr. Bong joon-ho's Parasite. Definitely tops the list of best movies in 2019.

Possibly the best film I've seen for some time, yes I have a few lockdown blues, and needed something to cause a bit of escapism, Parasite was the answer. It's one of those films that's almost impossibility to classify, it doesn't really fit into any specific genre, but covers almost all of them.

A great start, it holds your attention incredibly well, I enjoyed the latter stages as much as the first part of the film, I know some didn't. It just moves you into a totally different place.

You'll laugh, and cry, you'll lose yourself in the wonder. Do yourself a favour and order it, 10/10.

Finally saw this much talked about film. As a fan of Korean thrillers, this film surpassed my expectations. The film is about a poor family who cleverly n cunningly become employed by a wealthy couple, posing as unrelated, highly qualified individuals.

The film begins like a dark satire, it then proceeds into a captivating thriller n ends like a surreal crime.

The film is very entertaining inspite of the sad stuff shown about poor fellas but mind u, it is not at all demeaning. It is very gripping n weirdly hilarious.

This film is either a love or hate review. I get that most that hate it maybe didn't understand the message - I did, but it was written in a mind-boggling illogical plot-hole ridden way. What makes it even worse, is how great it was from the start, that when the ridiculousness kicked in, you become extremely disappointed. There are so many ways this could've been written much better - and still get the message across, and maintain the initial theme without tanking. Directing and cinematography were excellent, and the casting on point. And the 132 min runtime was flying by, until the plot started to tank. Clearly over-hyped and not worth anything more than my 6/10

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho ("Okja") says that he always tries to overturn viewer expectations and hopes that his latest film succeeds in this way. Palme d'Or winner at the 2019 Cannes Film festival, Bong's Parasite (Gisaengchung) does indeed thwart expectations, but the question is - to what end? Defying any strict genre classification, the film is a conglomeration of comedy, drama, satire, crime, horror, and anything else you can throw into the mix. Bong sees the film as a statement about the "ranks and classes" inherent in capitalism that are invisible to the eye, and says that the film "depicts the inevitable cracks that appear when two classes brush up against each other in today's increasingly polarized society." Unfortunately, the characterizations are filled with so many stereotypes that the lack of any realistic human dimension leaves Bong's statement without much impact.

The film looks at class differences between two families - one well-to-do, and the other n'eer do well. For the Kim family, life is a struggle. They live in a cramped bug-infested basement apartment without many amenities except for a toilet built on kind of a shelf. The father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho, "Snowpiercer") has failed in business and has accumulated many debts. His son and daughter Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik, "Train to Busan") and Ki-jung (Park So-dam, "Cinderella and Four Knights" TV series) have repeatedly failed college entrance exams. The mother Chung-sook (Hyae-jin Jang, "Adulthood") along with the two children fold boxes for a delivery company, but cannot even get that right. Not to worry, they leave their windows open when the fumigators come around to get some free extermination and steal free Wi-Fi from the next door coffee shop.

On the other hand, the nouveau riche Park family has all the advantages. Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun, "Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage") is the CEO of a high-tech company and the family lives in a spacious, modernistic home protected by sturdy concrete walls. He has an attractive somewhat fragile wife Yeon-kyo (Jo Yeo-jeong, "The Target"), a teenage daughter Da-hye (Jung Ji-so, "The Tiger"), and a hyper-active young son Da-song (Jung Hyun-jun). Being wealthy and somewhat elitist in their attitude, for Bong, they are ideally suited to be torn apart by ruthless grifters. With the aid of a friend, Ki-woo is hired to be a private tutor for Da-hye. Of course, he has to forge university documents to convince the trusting Mrs. Park of his competence. With that conquest out of the way, the cunning Ki-woo concocts a scheme to secure jobs in the Park household for his entire family.

Convinced that their young son is a budding Picasso, Mrs. Park hires Ki-jung as an art teacher, then falls for invented stories impugning the character of their driver and housekeeper to provide some more employment opportunities for the Kims, this time for the deadbeat dad Ki-taek and his wife Chung-sook. Bong said that "Sometimes with the characters in my films, I look at them cynically, but most of the time I have a lot of compassion for the characters, even with the villains." This compassion, however, does not seem to extend to the loyal, hardworking household workers, their work scammed out of existence. Without going into detail, the whole escapade backfires in a twist that is over-the-top unsettling even though utterly implausible.

Worthy of a Mack Sennett comedy, a sweet family drama turns into a tumultuous melange of hidden chambers, revenge, bloody violence, a torrential rainstorm, people hiding under beds, and any other mayhem that may come to mind. To be clear, Parasite can be very funny and some of the satire is sharp-edged, yet it is hardly, as one critic described it, "a masterful dissection of social inequality." When asked what he wanted viewers to get out of the film, Bong said, "I just hope that it gives audiences a lot to think about. It is in parts funny, frightening, and sad, and if it makes viewers feel like sharing a drink and talking over all the ideas they had while watching it, I'll wish for nothing more." Enjoy the drink. In a little while, you may have trouble remembering what the film was about.

This cinematographic gem has been recently rewarded by the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival. If I have one and only one advice to give you: go savor this fabulous movie with a strict minimum of information! Indeed, this film might schematically be split in two parts, the second one being quite surprising and unpredictable. The script is excellent and the casting is globally sumptuous, especially the gorgeous Cho Yeo-jeong for whom I may confess I have a crush.

As a postscript, an anecdote certainly insignificant but literally astonishing when you're French: in the middle of the film, the proletarian family gives itself up to an orgy, the coffee table being covered with manifold dishes including two French cheeses as industrial as cheap: « Le rustique » and « Bresse bleu ». Unbelievable!

A family who doesn't have a lot of money or opportunities in life, starts working for a wealthy family. But will this change the life of the poor family?

DIRECTOR: Bong Joon Ho SCREENWRITERS: Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Wan CAST: Song Kang Ho, Lee Sun Kyun, Cho Yeo Jeong, Choi Woo Shik, Park So Dam, Lee Jung Eun, Chang Hyae Jin In the movie, we follow the Kim family who doesn't have much money. By chance, the son in the family starts working for the wealthy Park family. He teaches their daughter English. Now the rest of the family sees opportunities to make money, and they have a plan to remove the rest of the staff who work for the wealthy Park family and then take the jobs themselves.

Bong Joon Ho addresses deeper themes, but he always manages to create entertainment and some surprising scenes that bring out the smile. The movie is mostly charming until the Kim family discovers the big secret of the house.

Then the movie starts to get darker, and it explodes into a wonderful finale where we see and understand the message of the movie. The title of the movie turns things on its head. Because what I thought to be quite obvious at the beginning of the movie is turned upside down and I got an aha experience. Parasites are found in all classes of society.

From a technical aspect I think this was a beautifully crafted film from the direction to the cinematography. There are so many beautiful scenes in the movie, and it's pretty well done considering that most of the action takes place inside the big house and the not so big garden.My favorite sequence is when the Kim family has to run home when the rain is pouring down, and you feel like they're on board the Titanic. They must run from the top and down to the engine room. What a wonderful sequence, and it's so beautiful to watch!

The cast was fantastic, and everyone fit the needs of their roles. The characters were well-written with the performances complementing that perfectly. It does a great job of creating a collection of characters that feel like real people, whom despite their eccentricities, maintained a grounded, realistic feel.The musical score complements the scenes nicely and elevates the emotional responses without feeling overbearing.

So, if you like foreign films, thrillers, or movies that can make you think a little check this one out. It's a crisp film from a technical aspect, and with a blend of great writing and acting you can't go wrong. It was a solid film that treats the audience with intelligence. 9/10