Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019): South Korea

This film was reviewed by Jacob Mohler at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2020.

Image result for parasite movie"Parasite is a South Korean film about a poor family, just struggling to get by, integrating themselves into the lives and home of a rich family. This film was written, directed and produced by the incredibly talented, Bong Joon Ho (Director and writer of “Okja”).

The film focuses on the Kim family, a poor family living in a below-ground apartment unit. They are all struggling to find jobs and earn money. The family is learning how to fold pizza boxes when Min (played by Seo-Joon Park), a friend of Ki-woo (played by Woo-sik Choi), comes to visit and lets him know that he has a job tutoring this rich families daughter. Min has to go away for college and needs somebody to step in as a tutor. He endorses Ki-woo for the job and he takes it.

When Ki-woo goes over for his interview he hears the mother, Park Yeon-kyo (played by Yeo-jeong Jo), says that they’re looking for someone to come over and work with their young son Park Da-song (played by Hyun-jun Jung). After he hears this he hatches a plan to have them hire his sister Kim Ki-jung (played by So-dam Park). After the two start working for the family, they plan to replace all of the current household staff with their parents.

When the family’s personal driver is driving Ki-jung home she removes her panties and leaves them in a visible spot for the father, Park Dong-ik (played by Sun-kyun Lee), to see next time he gets in the car. After finding the underwear the Park family decides to let him go and replace him with the father of the family, Kim Ki-taek (played by Kang- ho Song).

Once Ki-taek is accepted for the driver position they fall into the final phase in their plan, getting rid of the maid (played by Jeong-eun Lee), so that she can be replaced by their mom, Kim Chung-sook (played by Hye-jin Jang). They discover that the maid is extremely allergic to peaches, so they start planting peach fuzz all around the house making her very ill. When she continues to uncontrollably cough, Ki-taek tells the mother of the house that he found that the maid is suffering from Tuberculosis. When the mother finds out she almost immediately lets her go. This gives the family the opportunity to have them hire their mother.

Now the entire poor family is working for the rich family undercover. The rich family has no clue that they are all related.

So the Park family (the rich family) go camping for their son Park Da-song’s birthday and they leave the staff alone at home. They are taking full advantage of the home, drinking all of their boozes, eating all of their food and just overall taking over. Then they hear a knock at the door and it’s the first maid. She had left some of her belongings in the house and she needed to retrieve them. The family lets her in and find out about an interesting secret she’s been hiding. This is where the story takes a weird turn.

This film is so tremendously fantastic. I found myself laughing and jumping throughout the whole film.

On IMDB it lists this film as a “comedy”, “drama”, “crime” and “thriller” which I feel accurately portrays this film. I went into this film thinking it was gonna be a scary movie when it turned out to be more of a comedic thriller. Now not all of the film is comical, it is primarily a thriller with comedic attributes.

This film was the 5th film to showcases the amazing collaboration between Director Bong Joon-Ho and actor Kang-ho Song. The two started working together with their first film Memories Of Murder (2003) in which Kang-ho Song played a police detective working on a homicide case from 1986. They’ve gone on to continue working together on other projects such as Antarctic Journal (2005), The Host (2006), Snowpiercer (2013) and now Parasite (2019). They are a perfect duo and they really show off their amazing partnership in Parasite.

This film is not only perfectly written but it also is so visually pleasing! This is thanks to Set decorator Won-Woo Cho (set decorator for “Okja”), Production designer Ha-jun Lee (Production designer for “Okja”) and the Production managers Sang-Soo Kim (production manager for “Take Point”) and Sungho Nam (production manager for “Snowpiercer”). These very talented people not only made you feel a certain way about each set but made each of the sets. The Park’s home is an actual mansion that was built for the film! So was the Kim’s tiny little subfloor apartment unit. Along with their teams, they created every structure from scratch that is seen in the film. They are so talented.

All in all, this was a fantastic film and a trailblazer for foreign cinema. Last year was amazing with Alfonso Cuarón’s great film “Roma” and now we have another year with great foreign films. I feel that this film has a strong chance of earning “Best Picture” at the Oscars.

What an amazing push for Korean cinema!

Director Bong Joon Ho receiving the “Outstanding Director of the Year Award” at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival accompanied by his translator Sharon Choi.

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Published:
01.30.20 / 10pm
Category:
Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2020