[Review] Parasite (9/10)

Title - Parasite
Studio - NEON
Starring - Lee Sun Kyun, Cho Yeo Jeong, Choi Woo Shik, Park So Dam, Chang Hyae Jin, Song Kang Ho, Lee Jeong Eun, Jung Ji So
Writer - Bong Joon Ho
Director - Bong Joon Ho
Release - 11 October 2019

The trailers showed nothing about this movie and for good reasons. Sometimes it is harder to sell the movie this way; but then again, in this case it worked beautifully.

There were three very distinct acts in this movie, and Korean movies have a great way of making the first act lighthearted before shit hits the fan in the following acts.

From the moment the movie started, even in subtitles, I was completely sucked in and could not tear my attention away from what was happening onscreen and their dialogue. And what this act achieved very successfully was to make the audience get behind the Kim family members and really root for them even until the very end.

The second act had something very significant happen; but in the midst of how beautifully crafted those sequences were, somebody slipped and fell and, as a personal taste, while that was probably the only way this could have been done, but I thought it was too easy a way out.

Later on in the same act, some frantic cleaning activity had to happen and I thought it was unrealistic that the mess could have stayed hidden. I thought as a plot point the mess didn't have to have happen at all in the first place.

But everything else after that was directed again to perfection. Bong dived into the mentality of people living in the lower bracket of society and how their ego was also their downfall. In the final act, everything could have just stayed buried had someone not committed one crime - a crime that could have easily been avoided.

Then again, that was also the beauty of Bong's storytelling. He let you continue to think about his movie, have discussions about it, and have a feeling that stays with you long after you have left the movie.