Parasite

The Kims are a poor family struggling to make ends meet. Min (Park Seo-joon), a college student and friend of Ki-woo Kim (Choi Woo-Shik), recruits the latter to take over for him as an English tutor for Da-hye Park (Jung Ji-so), a high school student from an upper-class family. After getting his sister, Ki-jung (Park So-dam), to forge university credentials for him, Ki-woo is hired by the Da-hye’s gullible mother, Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong). Ki-woo, now answering to “Kevin,” begins a secret romance with Da-hye and talks Yeon-gyo into hiring his American-educated cousin “Jessica” (actually, Ki-jung) as an art therapist for her young son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun). Before long, the Kims have inserted themselves into the Park household, using underhanded means to get rid of existing servants who stood in their way. However, their scheming threatens to come back to bite them.

As 2013’s underrated Snowpiercer demonstrated, director Bong Joon-ho has a knack for visually striking cross-genre filmmaking laced with social commentary. While Parasite is a very different film, it carries on in that same tradition. Unfortunately, its critical acclaim and subsequent backlash have complicated a discussion of the film’s merits, which is almost as much of a robbery as what’s depicted on-screen.

Parasite begins as a dark comedy before morphing halfway through into a tense thriller and, ultimately, a tragedy. These tonal shifts can be jarring, but they make for an experience that is more than the sum of its parts. It also helps that the cast does a great job of shifting gears. As Mr. Kim, Song Kang-ho spends the first half of the movie as a shrewd but utterly shameless (albeit amusing) bum only to later settle into nihilism and regret. He’s matched by Jang Hye-jin as Mrs. Kim, an acid-tongued woman posing as a kindly housekeeper, and by Lee Jeong-eun as her predecessor in that role, a seemingly dutiful matron harboring a huge secret.

Though this film doesn’t match Snowpiercer as a visual spectacle, it still benefits from tight editing and aesthetics that reinforce the class divide. The Kims’ semi-basement apartment is small and cramped while the Parks’ house is large, bright, and airy. So too does a picturesque sunny day contrast with vicious rain the evening before as one family’s cause of celebration is another’s reminder of loss.

Given this unsubtle treatment of theme, it would be tempting to read Parasite as a work of eat-the-rich resentment in the vein of Joker, but to do so would be to ignore the complexities at play here. The Kims’ situation renders them sympathetic, but they are also liars and predatory schemers who screw over even other working-class folks. On the other hand, with the exception of Mr. Park (a condescending snob), the Parks are nice people, but, as Mrs. Kim notes, this is because they can “afford to be.” Ultimately, it is the film’s refusal to stereotype its characters that elevates it from predictable propaganda into more engaging fare.