Review: "Parasite" is a Sick and Desperate Masterpiece

Scene from Parasite (2019)

As its title would suggest, Parasite is a film that has infected the public consciousness for most of 2019. After winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes, it has slowly gained more acclaim for being one of the weirdest, most twisted films of the year. No amount of advertising could truly take away its mystique. Even the fact that it's dominating at the American box office in ways that few Korean films have should say how special this film is. But what is Parasite, and why is director Bong Joon-ho suddenly being labeled as the Oscar front-runner? To put it simply, the film is just that good. This isn't just a story that appeals to Korean ideals. It's a story that feels like a universal problem finally distilled in one entertaining, horrific package that is impossible to ignore. Not only is this Joon-ho's best work (which is really saying something), but it's one of the most essential narratives of the decade.

To talk about Parasite is to discover how much of its themes apply to an American context as well. It's a story of social classes competing against each other for a basic level of comfort. The central family comes from the literal bottom, below the streets where they watch vagrants urinate in the middle of the night, where the waste all gathers. They have no choice but to join the gig economy, folding pizza boxes and becoming thrifty con artists just to have some form of happiness. Their apartment doesn't even have Wi-Fi, proving just how much they leech on the world around them for basic needs. Their competitors range from the traditional working class, most notably a maid who cleans up after the ideal foe: the rich family who would be helpless without them. Everyone is chasing that dream, and they want to be able to live in a luxurious home, unaware of the secrets that lie within the confines. It's part of the story's appeal, and it all ties into the social struggles of our times.

For Joon-ho, the easy metaphor comes in literal elevation. The families on the bottom receive all of the problems tossed out the door from the top. Those on the top don't have to care because it just disappears like a plastic bag in a breeze. The film never plays up the resentment that these two parties have, though there is that sad revelation that no matter how bad everything gets, they still want to be at the top, where there doesn't appear to any problems. The characters seem to have it the easiest with a sparse two-story home with a beautiful backyard and a child who gives into his wills. In a smart move, Joon-ho doesn't demonize them in ways that fat cat archetypes tend to be. Instead, they are both ideal and comically out of touch. The third act's insanity even shifts perspectives of victimhood and asks why the top never thinks to look down.

The universe is packed with endless symbolism. It will impact each viewer differently, especially for those with limited awareness of relationships among various Asian countries. While these details may go ignored, Joon-ho still packs the film with enough universal malice to make something stick. There are allusions to biblical oppression and, in one of the more prominent set-pieces, an "American Indian" tee-pee. The wording seems simple enough, though it comes loaded with the subtext that is painful for those aware of how a group considering themselves superior murdered the indigenous people. The choice for the rich to proudly display it in their yard for their son, whose wild behavior goes unnoticed, feels like the perfect commentary on how the rich appropriate iconography without caring what it means to the heritage. There's constant negligence, and it only gets worse the further into the plot that things go.

It's an entertaining journey and the central family is a fascinating study. Kim (Kang-ho Song) leads the family through a series of devious deeds that better his family. Could you blame him? It beats living at the bottom, where a wave of sewage can flow into their living room? It forces the viewer to begin to sympathize and even empathize with the struggles even as things become more profane. They're constantly performing acts of career sabotage against others for their own benefit, even lying to their clients in hopes that they'll have a better life. The joy it gives them reflects how money is the true parasite, determining how wealth impacts the image that everyone has of each other. It's a story that feels best discovered on one's own, and for those who ever had to live paycheck-to-paycheck, this one will sting a little more. The people here aren't evil even if they are deceptive liars. They're merely desperate for financial durability.

Joon-ho has been making an incredible career out of making genre films into universal tales of struggle. This decade alone has seen him use an action/sci-fi setting in Snowpiercer to tell a similar story aboard a train. He also released the charming "meat-is-murder" commentary of Okja that became the most entertaining reason to go vegetarian since Babe. He has a gift for making stories that transcend culture and speak to something deep in humanity's core. With Parasite, he has centralized his themes so succinctly that this Alfred Hitchcock-style thriller can't be bogged down by its gimmick. Yes, there are twists that are shocking and give the "edge of your seat" colloquialism actual substance. It's just as fun knowing those twists, but even more exciting, funny, and horrifying to know what they mean in a cultural context. Not since Get Out has a filmmaker used an average frame so densely, requiring a frame-by-frame dissection to better understand the cinematic craft and how narrative can be enhanced by the properly placed prop.

Parasite is a masterpiece, plain and simple. Unlike other recent exports that are great but appeal to niche audiences, this is one of the few that feels like it wants to tell a greater story. It wants to prove that world cinema has a place for everyone, even if they're struggling to keep things afloat. There's a power in every frame and the tension makes the average minute feel richer, wanting the next one to reveal its shocking truths quicker and quicker. Joon-ho has been a great filmmaker, but one can imagine that this will get him taken more seriously as someone who can speak the universal language of cinema with a message we all care about. There's not a wasted frame here, and the finale is one that threatens to haunt audiences for a few weeks, drawing them back in for another viewing. It's been a while since a film felt this urgent and exciting