Parasite cleaned up at the Oscars—Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature, Best Etc.—so we’re holding it over another week. If you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a treat. If you have seen it, see it again, and catch all the little Easter eggs you missed. Bong Joon Ho brings his work home to Korea in this pitch-black modern fairytale. Meet the Park Family, the picture of aspirational wealth. And the Kim Family, rich in street smarts but not much else. Be it chance or fate, these two houses are brought together and the Kims sense a golden opportunity. Masterminded by college-aged Ki-woo, the Kim children expediently install themselves as tutor and art therapist to the Parks. Soon, a symbiotic relationship forms between the two families. The Kims provide “indispensable” luxury services while the Parks obliviously bankroll their entire household. When a parasitic interloper threatens the Kims’ newfound comfort, a savage, underhanded battle for dominance breaks out, threatening to destroy the fragile ecosystem between the Kims and the Parks.
“Bong has some ideas in Parasite, but the movie’s greatness isn’t a matter of his apparent ethics or ethos… but of how he delivers truths, often perversely and without an iota of self-serving cant.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times
“It tells a story you could probably follow without subtitles, or any dialogue at all: the faces of these actors show with piercing clarity how it feels to be outsiders in a world of wealth and privilege.” — Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine
“Let’s just say it: the South Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho is some kind of genius and he tops himself with Parasite–it’s explosive filmmaking on every level and one of the cinema high points of 2019. You won’t know what hit you.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Bong Joon Ho
Bong Joon Ho (story), Bong Joon Ho (screenplay), Bong Joon Ho (story by), Jin Won Han (screenplay)
Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo, Woo-sik Choi
Korean, English
South Korea
NEON