Parasite (Film Review)

2019 CJ Entertainment/Neon
Directed by: Bong Joon-ho; Written by: Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won
Starring: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, and Park So-dam
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 132 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 9/10

The Kim family live in what is essentially a hole in the ground, at the end of a violently-sloping apartment-lined street that could double as a human ant farm. As the family of four chokes on city fumigation dust that's pumped through their window, shortly before infiltrating a wealthy home as respectively, tutors, a housekeeper, and a driver, under false pretenses, it seems clear and obvious who the Parasite of this movie's title is supposed to be. If only Bong Joon-ho's directorial output was that simple.
The Kim's infiltration of the wealthy Park family's home begins after college-aged Ki-woo receives a tip that the Park family's daughter requires tutoring. Considering the Kim family's only meager income has come from folding pizza boxes, Ki-woo jumps at the opportunity. Soon, he's got his sister, Ki-jeong, on the Park family staff, posing as an art therapist for the Parks' hyperactive young son. Through Ki-jeong's clever machinations, the Parks' driver is fired, and Kim family patriarch, Ki-taek, pretending to be a career car-man, takes the position. When the Kims realize the Parks' housekeeper, Moon-gwang, is highly allergic to peaches, they're grinding up peach rinds and secretly sprinkling them on the elderly woman like salt on a slug. Kim matriarch, Chung-sook, starts brushing up on her cooking and cleaning skills.
Soon, Moon-gwang's been handed a pink-slip, and all the Kims have been taken on, now working in the Parks' hill-topping, shrub-surrounded, famous-architect-constructed house, and able to afford all the buffet food they want. The only thing is...well, the Parks are a really nice family, but it seems like they don't like the way the Kims smell. There's also the matter of holding up the facade that the four new houseworkers aren't all from the same family--even if the youngest Park thinks they all have that identical stench. Small price to pay, though, right?
Bong Joon-ho handles this first act of the film as a fast-paced, madcap comedy, with the Kim's out-scheming and deceiving the wealthy, seemingly well-meaning Parks and their original staff-members treated lightly. However, this wouldn't be a Bong Joon-ho film without a hard left-turn in the second act. Parasite's turn comes just when the Kims seem to be having their most ideal night. The Parks have left town to go camping, and the Kims have the house and all its ridiculous overabundance of fine food and drink to themselves. Right in the middle of a drunken revelry that's not without a bit of edge and tension, the doorbell rings. It's a crazed and desperate Moon-gwang. She's not going away...and she wants to retrieve something she's hidden in a secret passage under the Parks' basement.
As the film veers into darker and darker territory, Joon-ho aptly steers the change in tone and mood. The comedic moments never completely disappear, only grow darker. The wizened filmmaker has grown to a point that such transitions are so seamless, yet creative, they feel both shocking, and the only natural possible outcome of what came before. Unlike in near classic, The Host, the change in tone in Parasite doesn't lead to any sort of lag, nor an overstay of welcome. If anything, as it moves forward, Parasite gains an even greater sense of urgency.
This urgency is due to an undercurrent of anger that Joon-ho is able to guide like perhaps no other filmmaker working today. There's a sense of systemic injustice at work in this film, much as there is in many of the South Korean filmmaker's previous works. The miracle of Joon-ho's work, particularly in Parasite, is that he is able to belabor his points with such subtlety and with such humanity and empathy. Parasite has no true villain, and yet, its climactic, cathartic violence, while wrong and misdirected by the characters who perpetrate it, feels strangely just. Parasite is the rare film that refuses to stay in the theater once you've left...it burrows into your subconscious...perhaps the title is more apt than it seems on the surface.