Parasite is meticulously plotted, perfectly cast, and hugely entertaining

Posted on 4th October 2020

Parasite is deservedly the first foreign language film to win an Oscar for best film. It is meticulously plotted, perfectly cast, and hugely entertaining, Bong Joon-ho won two more, for direction and script, along with a fistful of BAFTAs and a Palme d’Or, with a film that mercilessly explores his distrust of wealth and authority.

The affluent Park family literally turn up their noses up at the Kim family, who live in effluent-flooded squalor. Yet the Kim’s are mendacious, mercenary and manipulative. Audience sympathies flip between characters as the plot thickens, spiralling hilariously out of control in a way that defies expectation. The movie benefits from a uniformly excellent cast, with Cho Yeo-jeong and Hye-jin Jang  particularly memorable as the uptight mother and her enigmatic housekeeper. Jung Jae-il’s superb score is just as key, moving from piano solo to mini symphonies, in a way that perfectly mirrors the frequent and extraordinary shifts in tone.

Shakespearean in scale, this is a tale of two families that morphs from comedy to thriller and back again. Beyond that teaser, the less you know going in the better. You can be assured, however, that you are in the hands of a director at the top of his game.