User reviews

I am remarkably stingy with my 10/10 ratings. I'll be the first person to acknowledge this. Of the roughly 2600 titles I've rated on here, only 34 have a 10. Parasite is one of them. If this isn't a masterpiece, then I don't know what is.

I'm going to keep it vague on the plot-front, because I didn't know anything about it going in, and was really excited to see it progress and unfold in satisfying, unexpected ways.

What I will say is that this film, more than just about any other I've seen, put me through so many different emotional states during its 132-minute runtime, and did so without ever feeling muddled or tonally inconsistent. Parts of this movie were hilarious. Parts were heartbreaking. Other parts were insanely suspenseful (I'm honestly not sure if I've felt this close to the edge of my seat since the final season of Breaking Bad, way back in 2013).

And it does all this while being perfectly paced, beautifully directed, and amazingly acted from every single member of its cast. All the characters are understandable and sympathetic to some degree; the amount of conflict, drama and tension derived from a narrative with no clear heroes and villains is staggering. You come to care for just about all of them.

I'm stumped to come up with any flaws for this movie. And sure, I've seen many movies that are hard to fault, but it's rare that a movie appeals to me on a gut level and excites me to this degree while also being so close to technically perfect. It's extremely entertaining, thoroughly moving in so many different ways, and as icing on the cake there's a ton of social commentary and some heavy themes to chew on once the movie's over (and this one's not going to leave my head for a while, I can tell).

Catch this one when you can and believe the hype. Joon-Ho Bong has made many great films (and so far no bad one's), but this even manages to stand head and shoulders above all the others.

When it comes time to consider what the best film of the 2010s was, this one will surely be up there.

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that contained as many genres as 'Parasite'. The movie starts out almost like an 'Ocean's Eleven' heist film and then expands into a comedy, mystery, thriller, drama, romance, crime and even horror film. It really did have everything and it was strikingly good at all of them too.

I love a film that respects its audience. There are so many details in this movie that are crucially important and yet the film trusts its audience to notice them and acknowledge them without ramming them down our throats. There are a lot of layers to this film and I suspect for this reason its rewatch-ability factor will be very high.

The film was incredibly entertaining too. I can't think of a boring scene in this movie and yet on the surface for large parts of the film you would say not a lot is happening, at least in terms of action. Fascinating characters and brilliant dialogue are what create this. I had a great time with 'Parasite' and I think most that give it a chance will too.

In a meritocracy, success and fortune are reserved for those who deserve it--those who develop solid plans according to their talents and abilities and who execute those plans through hard work and determination. Anyone can rise to the top, and for some lucky Cinderella, plucked from the cinders and gussied up in gowns, the meritocracy represents the heights of perfect egalitarian society: "I started with nothing and ended up with everything I ever desired; you, too, can achieve you dreams, if only you try."

The promise of unobstructed sunshine at the top of the mountain becomes justification for bitter competition, backstabbing, deceit, and callousness. You climb the crooked ladder until you make it to the straight one, and then, perhaps, when you at last feel secure, you can afford to be kind and confident and generous. "It's easy to be nice when you're rich," the mother in this film (Jang Hye-jin) at one point observes.

But it's a very long and very crooked ladder, and sometimes the rungs give out beneath your grip, and sometimes they've been dangerously greased by those who climbed before you, and sometimes the ladder itself is simply kicked down--either by those above you or, just as often, by those staring up from the ground below. There are a lot of people trying to climb that one ladder.

But in a meritocracy, you can't blame the ladder or the other people trying to climb it. Nor can you blame the fact that all the good stuff is kept so many stories up instead of down at the ground where everyone can easily reach it. No, you must blame yourself. You should have tread more carefully. You should have climbed more quickly. You should have used a firmer and more precise grip, anticipated disasters, and known just when to leap. If you fail in a meritocracy, it's all your fault. You should have tried harder. Better luck next time.

Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik), the young man who is the main character of PARASITE, several times refers to "metaphors," and the film itself is, of course, a metaphor. On a surface level, viewers are treated to a very thrilling, engaging, well-paced and well-plotted crime story. At all times, however, bubbling up from beneath the slick surface of this genre film, there are deeply personal, meaningful truths that should resonate with almost any viewer. These insights are rarely foregrounded. They are so subtly interwoven, in fact, that if you're like me, you may be completely surprised when the final shots of the film roll and you realize that you are emotionally devastated by the intimate, humanist story you've just witnessed. Bong Joon-ho's filmmaking is so extraordinary here that he'll make you fully invested in the lives of his characters without you even realizing he's done so.

I want to avoid spoilers here, but suffice it to say that PARASITE is a masterpiece--beautifully lensed, enthrallingly edited, superbly acted, and intimately involving.

South Korea has a population that is one sixth the size of the United States, and that population is stacked into skyscrapers in an area slightly smaller than the state of Kentucky. Higher education is widespread, so parents with means try to make their children stand above the pack by hiring them tutors and signing them up for extracurriculars and afterschool programs. I lived in Korea once, and the children I taught there were sometimes engaged in learning ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week--public school, English-immersion private school, piano class, soccer team, taekwondo, math camp, chess club, and so on. I routinely worked sixty to seventy hours a week on salary, but at bars I would meet young men my age who were expected to work far more than that, who slept at their desks so that they did not need to pry themselves from work for too long. As the father (Song Kang-ho) in the film at one point says, this is a country where fifty young men with college degrees apply for a mere security guard job. One can't afford not to struggle.

The themes of this story are not just localized to Korea, however. They are the story of global capitalism, and the specter of American materialism (and imperialism; note the "Indians") looms heavily over the film. Meritocracy makes cannibals of us all. It's nice to dream, and sometimes the dreamers who plan and struggle well enough can indeed climb out of the basement and into the sunshine, and how nice an ending it is when they do. But the film also makes it clear that sometimes all that planning and dreaming may be, maybe, just whims and fancy. More often, it seems, our pipe dreams are content to leave us with nothing more than the whiff of spewed sewage.

This movie is a gosh darn masterpiece. It will make you belly laugh, it will chill you to the bone, and it will make you shed a tear. This movie will stay with you long after the credits are over.

If you plan on watching this movie, AVOID SPOILERS AT ALL COSTS.

This is a well written and well perfomed original film. With a lot of repetitive cinema these day i felt this was something new. I felt connected and engaged with the character throughout the film. There are several well directed tense moments throughout the film. A popular topic of class struggled well portrayed. Its always nice to see foreign language films having worldwide success.

The most original film of 2019 and it is wickedly funny and darkly disturbing all at the same time. The narrative and the actors were excellent. One of the better endings of a movie in quite a while. Class warfare at its best.

A poor family see an opportunity whenever their son starts tutoring English for a wealthy family - if they can engineer it, they can each get one of the jobs within the household. This is the basis for a film that starts out as a sort of con story, seeing the rich family as the 'marks'. As it plays out though, it keeps this assumption in the background, eating at the viewer as an idea, before then making it very relevant in the closing aspects of the plot. Between the start and then, the focus is on the various twists and turns of the drama itself. In this the film engages, and I found it easy to engage with it on the basis of what was happening.

The later develops do work better though when viewed in the context of the social aspect. There are lots of clever critics that can talk to you about the meaning and hidden depths of commentary from the film; for me the key one was the falseness of the 'con' itself. Although the family mock the gullibility of the rich family, it is not like they are stealing money from them, or somehow dislodging them from their position in life - no, they are just providing labour to them in exchange of comparatively low wages. They are doing this at the expense of other working people just trying to keep a job, and the rich family could probably not care less about the 'truth' as long as their needs continue to be met. This aspect is important for the direction of the later stages of the film, and adds sense to what happens and why, but it is interesting in and of itself. Technically the film looks great, and the director builds mood and tone well. Performances are strong across all the cast, but the turn from Song Kang Ho probably was my favourite as he was the most subtle and had the most space to shift across the running time.

There is a lot of talk for Oscar recognition, but it is a handsome, clever film and the timing in the year is right - I don't see it being the first foreign language film to win best picture, but this is more to do with the system than with the film. Regardless of awards or not, it is an engaging drama, with unusual developments, and built on top of an intelligent social aspect which links well to the direction of the narrative.

Well written and performed also technically shines cinematography & bgm are too good and there's not even a single lag it's perfectly edited. Probably the best experience in recent times. Its pure art resembles the modern society the emotions they had shelved are insanely exceptional a layered masterpiece. If you like dark thrillers then you shouldn't miss Mr. Bong joon-ho's Parasite. Definitely tops the list of best movies in 2019.

As a film about a family imposing on another, and keeping dark secrets hidden beneath the surface, Parasite achieves what Jordan Peele set out to do with Us: tell a multi-layered story in a widely entertaining manner, but without sacrificing the believability of its central narrative.

That's not to say that Us is an ineffective film by any means, but when it comes to crafting weighty social commentaries under the guise of lighter fare, writer-director Bong Joon-ho is in a class of his own.

The film follows a lower-class South Korean family as they slowly integrate themselves in the lives of an upper-class family and their lavish household. As their entanglement is spun out of a web of deceit, the lowly family find themselves skating on thin ice when it comes to keeping up appearances.

It's a twisty satire on social-economic disparities in South Korean society that swings broadly in tone, and sometimes threatens to tip over the edge, but never feels less than meticulously calculated in its tonal shifts.

However, to reveal anything more about the story would be to take away from the overall experience, as each act is marked by a major plot twist or revelation that keeps the film one step ahead of the viewer at all times. Go in blind if you can and expect an unforgettable ride.

The film is interesting, but that's about it. The first hour was really slow, the whole class thing seemed quite familiar. I'm not sure why people are falling over themselves about this film, maybe since it was Korean yet with an accessible story and familiar film language that it suddenly moved westerners to 'see the light'? Anyway, the second half twists and turns struck me more as a wacky story line I would have seen on a soap opera back in the day like Young and the Restless or Days of our Lives. Overall, I'm more critical of the critics than of the film. I recommend seeing this, it's worth a look but all the Oscars and 'best film of the decade' stuff is incomprehensible.

1.This movie is too over rated, I don't know, maybe it is something wrong with me because so many people appreciates this film superlatively...

2. All the characters are pathetically unlikable. They only show flaws. You don't want to be them; you don't want to be with them ... not at the beginning, nor in the middle, nor in the end.

3. This lowlife 4-member family was at bay and struggled to a barely survived condition, the husband/father was unemployed for a very long time, the wife was nothing but a mean heartless woman, the son and the daughter had failed the college entry exams for so many times. This helpless and hopeless family couldn't simply become a well practiced con-artist family overnight. If they were such great scammers, they would not have fallen so low and so helpless for such a long time. They don't have money to afford a dignified basic living standard. They would not be possible to suddenly become expert con-artist so easy and so soon.

4. I don't understand what the intention of the director is? What does he want to explain or to prove? Is it a critic of social inequalities? Is it a thriller? A comedy? I don't know and none of these styles is addressed adequately.

Do you want to see a movie that will have your stomach in knots, anxious during many scenes? Do you want to see a movie that will have you conflicted on who you're rooting for? Regardless of your answers, see Parasite. Parasite ticks along quietly until it is booming in your ears. The symbolism varies. Sometimes it is obvious, Bong Joon-ho might as well have made the subtitles spell it out. But other times it is more subtle, and you might realize a connection or symbolism days or weeks after. Bong Joon-ho is a master at that. The conversation that it sparks is worth the $13-20 it costs to see the film. Parasite has made me think more than most films I've seen. Give it a watch, see it with friends or family and the dinner table will have a conversation overflowing with opinions and realizations.

This is a movie about a class struggle in South Korea, like what movie "Us" attempts to do but done properly. It is a stark reminder of what true living standards for most South Koreans look like, and its realism is very painful. Few are aware of the fact that up to the 1980s, South Korea was in fact more impoverished than North Korea, and it was only late that the situation reversed with famines of the 90s etc, but many people still live miserable lives, and situation is very similar to that in China, where a few got gloriously rich but the urban masses still live in bug infested cheap dwellings.

Some crafty members of this underclass manage to con contemptuous rich man into employing them as his servants. For many Asians smell is a way to express utter contempt, and this is often directed against the white people, who, being able to process milk, smell "like butter" and are seen in rac ist light as unclean, but the same rac ist contempt is directed towards the poor. The poor accept these valuations and fight for the crumbles, like roaches in the dark, but in life and death situations, resentment might boil up and the contempt might cost the rich their empty heads.

The movie paints a sad picture of modern East Asian societies, with many subtle points, criticizes their culture and emulation of the America, with a few cruel but precise strokes. The sheer talent of the Korean filmmaker, but also the fact that West likes movies from foreign countries that are self bashing, allowing the worst condescension rooted in colonialism that failed miserably in East Asia to thrive, one more reason to cheer this slightly overrated movie.

What an amazing film! Clearly an essay on the class divide. Writing lovable but nasty people is tough, but perfectly executed here.

They quite clearly cross the line, and when I mean "they" I mean bother the working class and the upper class. You could easily argue that "parasite" refers to one family trying to suck another family dry. Or that the upper class is draining the labour of the lower class, and expecting them to be grateful about it too! There is also something about the American Indian theme, a metaphor for dying cultural traditions which are being replaced by modernity? Nature is dog eat dog? Or is it a homage to an "idyllic" past where Native American culture was relatively classless?

Either way a must watch if you can handle subtitles!

This film doesn't allow easy reviewing because it has many aspects, many ways to look at. Is it thriller? Comedy? Drama? Societal critique? It's all of it; and therefore none of it. All in all, I was underwhelmed and mildly frustrated.

The style is there, I grant it. Cinematography is great. Acting is awkward at some points, but it's OK because of the partially comedy-like nature of this film.

But then, there is a problem with story telling. It builds up nicely toward the middle, where the parasites settle in their host and discover the secret down below. And then it makes an unexpected turn. It's alright to make a surprise at the end (I'd even say it's good), as long as it flows reasonably from the preceding story line. A reveal must make sense once it is revealed. This one didn't do the job convincingly for me. We are given very little clue about why people acted the way they did at the birthday party.

This film is just fine, but no masterpiece in my opinion. Some films are so easy to understand to the point of being insulting; others are so obscure to the point of being pointless. Great films do it just right somewhere in this spectrum. Unfortunately, this one is leaning to the pointlessness.

It was entertaining, with good execution. But best picture?

Some people seem to love the fact that it switches masterfully between genres, which to me seems like something that would excite a movie geek or critic more than it would a regular viewer.

Others delight in the ambiguity of not quite knowing whom to root for - while that might distinguish it from a stereotypical "american" narrative it hardly elevates it to some exalted status. To its credit, I think the strongest feature of the film is that the director brilliantly manipulates the viewer's emotions by superimposing classically sympathetic elements onto the objectively non-virtuous and indeed villainous. What seems relatable and sympathetic in the moment is actually part of a pattern of deeply objectionable behavior, while what seems moderately dislikable is actually fairly mundane. This incongruity is layered on to brilliant effect.

Now, many are praising the supposedly deep, revelatory social commentary on the nature of class struggle, but I don't find it nearly as profound as is claimed. The overtly sensational, absurd plot if anything detracts from the relatability of a social message, and the storyline (even leaving aside the over-the-top scenes that are exaggerated for cinematic effect) is chock full of innumerable ordinary lapses, discontinuities and implausibilities to the point of distraction. More importantly, the characters are all minimally developed and characteristic of a one-sided view of the world in which people act out their base grievances and fantasies over a veneer of class-determinant normalcy. It strikes me that there is little to no consideration of virtue, even in momentary antithesis. Yet if this is the social revelation then it is a deeply cynical one, and also an implausible one because the world is not so one-sided and simple. For this reason, the film ends up revealing very little realistic insight into the human character or social dynamics. It is not a bad film as it is well executed and clever in its emotional manipulation, but I am not willing to dole out gushing praise.

There are a few suspenseful scenes and a decent plot, along with comedic dialogue, but that's it. It's not a "metaphorical masterpiece" that some critics and users are saying. I feel as though too many people are trying to be expert critics like on that episode of South Park where the entire town writes crazy yelp reviews for all the restaurants.