Parasite Review

Earlier this week I reviewed "Jojo Rabbit." In that review I mentioned that I did a double feature of "Jojo Rabbit" and "Parasite" the other weekend. That was quite the intense pair of movies to watch in one evening. But now after having reviewed "Jojo Rabbit," it's time to explore this other movie, one that I have no idea how to properly review. But I'm going to do my best as well go along. Quite frankly, I knew almost nothing about this movie going in. All that I saw is a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes as I was in. A win at the Cannes Film Festival back in May helped, as did a huge amount of praise from every film festival it stopped at along the way. And now all of that is leading to a whole ton of Oscar buzz, with it being a top contender to WIN best picture. I don't need anything else. I'm sold. And I was also told that this is a movie that is best experienced by knowing absolutely nothing going in. I don't even remember who I heard that from, but I took that person by their word and read/watched nothing about this. I don't even remember seeing a trailer. I just went in and was ready to be surprised at whatever the heck this movie is that people are buzzing about. If you want to do the same and just go see this, please do. I totally recommend that. Then you can come back and read this review.

However, I totally understand that not all of you are like me in that way. You're not going to blindly walk into a small, independent film that you know nothing about just because I said go see it. You need to know what the heck this is. So I'm going to reveal this movie's premise. First, though, it's a Korean film, so if you're allergic to subtitles then you definitely need to see this movie because you need to get over that dumb allergy and watch more foreign films. Subtitles are OK. And we better as heck not get an American remake of this film five years from now because of people's refusal to see foreign films. I hate when that happens. The other thing I need to say is that this is a movie by Bong Joon Ho. If you don't know that name right off the bat, he's the guy who did "Snowpiercer" and "Okja." That should get you excited. Of those two, "Snowpiercer" is especially a wild ride that is a lot of fun. If you haven't seen that one, fix that as soon as possible. After having seeing those two films and now "Parasite," Bong Joon Ho is definitely a director I have my eye on. In fact, I want to go back and check out some of his other movies, like "Memories of Murder," "The Host" (the one from 2006) and "Mother" (the one from 2009 -- NOT the recent one from Darren Aronofsky).

Switching gears to "Parasite," this is a movie that definitely has a lot to say about the class system, but it does it in such a crazy way that is equal parts fun and intense. The movie surrounds this lower class family of four (Mom, Dad, daughter, son) who is having struggles making ends meet. The son stumbles on a job from a friend working for this super rich family, tutoring their daughter. So far, so good. Nothing out of the ordinary. But after a bit, the son decides to see if he can get away with getting his sister a job for the same family without telling said family that she's his sister. But then they don't stop there. They decide that they are going to all get hired for this family, which suddenly leads this into feeling like a heist film. Because in order to get everyone hired, they have to figure out morally questionable ways of getting the current workers who earn an honest wage to get fired. Thus this poor family really aren't the heroes of this film. They're getting themselves involved in all sorts of questionable stuff while this rich family really isn't doing anything wrong. They're not portrayed as snobby and unlikable. They're just living their lives as best as they can while the angry poor people decide to take advantage of them.

That's what makes this so interesting. Yes, it's very much a social commentary about the class system, but Bong Joon Ho doesn't really take any sides in his writing and directing. He presents two sides of the coin and lets it all play out. I almost thought that this was a Robin Hood style of story, robbing the rich to feed the poor. But Robin Hood did things for the greater good. This poor family is doing all of this for completely selfish reasons. Yes, they want to better their situation, but they let jealousy and greed take over. They have an obvious animosity towards this rich family, but it's solely because of their riches and possessions. The rich couple is actually super nice. They're the ones that are the most likable. They did nothing wrong except for being financially well off. That's not a sin. The lower class often blames the upper class of being snobby and arrogant, but more often than not it's the lower class that is more prideful. It's pride from the bottom looking up. Yet the problem here with this rich family is that of naivity and ignorance. They're not bad people. They've become unaware of their surroundings. When a huge rainstorm hits, they're disappointed that their camping trip didn't work out while being completely unaware that people in the lower class lost their homes.

It's a fascinating contrast here. Yet despite all of that, I found myself rooting for this poor family, much like I do in every heist film. Is it wrong of Danny Ocean and friends to decide to rob a casino? Absolutely. But with the way the movie is framed, you cheer them on the whole way. What makes this work well in "Parasite" is that, despite being very morally ambiguous, this poor family has such strong chemistry. This is due to some fantastic acting across the board. Now I'm the worst at Korean, but Wikipedia is going to help me out here so that I can say that Song Kang-ho (the dad), Jang Hye-jin (the mom), Choi Woo-shik (the son) and Park So-dam (the daughter) did an excellent job of portraying this family. If any one of them gets their name called when Oscar nominations come around, I'll be stoked. In paying attention to the buzz, Song Kang-ho seems to be the one who could represent this movie, but we'll see. Although this is an instance wherein I'm sad that best ensemble cast is not an option at the Oscars because this would fit perfectly into that. There's not one actor in the group that stands out of the crowd. They all do good. They play off each other very well as a believable family, so I wanted them to succeed even though they were in the wrong.

But this movie is not just a comedy or a heist. This movie is also very much a thriller. I don't want to even tell you why. Everything I've talked to you about so far is the movie's initial set up. While I was having a lot of fun during the first part of this movie, I slowly became more and more uncomfortable as I started to realize that something was off. And that just nagged at me the whole film, thus I have to give huge credit to Bong Joon Ho for doing a phenomenal job at properly setting up tension. But not just that, he does a great job of balancing the different tones in the movie. The fun I was having did not compromise the tension I was starting to feel. Nor did the rising tension make the comedy aspects less funny. It was perfectly intertwined. But when the humor and the fun of the whole thing was ready to give way to full-out tension, it was a very smooth transition. And while Bong Joon Ho did a great job of setting up the tension, he did an even better job of executing it all. There's a point in this movie where it unleashes, which caused me to cower in my chair. The movie isn't just an empty, fun heist movie. It's a movie that incorporates actual real-world consequences towards actions that are taken. And there's no easy escape from it all.

By the end of this movie, this is one of those experiences that left me in a stunned silence. I went and saw the movie with a friend, but I did not do a good job at participating in the conversation about the movie on our way home because I needed some time to recover and process everything. This is an absolutely crazy film that is bound to leave a mark. It's one of those films that lives up to all the hype. Oftentimes I'll see a movie that's super crazy hyped up and I'll walk out of it thinking it was decent movie, but nothing super special. "Parasite," on the other hand, is something else. It did have one Grinch give it a bad review, so it's down to 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes after being at 100 percent for the longest time. But, yeah, it totally deserves to be that high. And if it feels like I haven't done the best job of describing exactly why, it's because I can't. I've only briefly told you the emotions I felt during the second half of the movie and that's as far as I can go. So you're just going to have to trust me on this one. Even if you chose to read this whole review instead of following my recommendation of going in blindly, I'm not going to help you out any more. But for mysteriously cryptic reasons, this is one of my favorite movies of the year and I'm giving it a 10/10.