January Movie Review (Parasite)

Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’ became one of the most talked about movies of 2019, with a lot of moviegoers praising it to be a masterpiece or the movie of the year after its premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The movie has received several nominations for various awards and won the 2020 Golden Globe as the Foreign Language Film winner.

With all of this high praise in mostly positive reviews and countless video essays on the film, I was intrigued. I remember watching the trailer before the movie had been released but found myself uninterested. However, I recently decided to try and watch the film myself as I was curious to see why others had called it a masterpiece. I was a bit underwhelmed, to say the least.

The story centres around Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), and Ki-jung (Park So-dam), a poor, unemployed family of four struggling financially until Ki-woo’s friend (Park Seo-joon) offers Ki-woo a job as an English tutor for a wealthy family’s daughter, Park Da-hye (Jeong Ji-so). After posing as a university student and getting hired so easily on the first day, he and his family devised a plan to get all of them hired by the Park family. They would each pose as someone skilful and elite but unrelated to each other. Their scheme to scam the Park family worked smoothly, until they were confronted with the consequences of their actions.

From the description of the plot, it isn’t exactly what you’d expect from a psychological thriller. The movie starts off light and it isn’t until the second half that it finally gets to the thriller side of the story. There are even some elements of comedy and family drama mixed in and, yet, it doesn’t seem to disrupt the pacing of the overall story nor does it feel out of place. In fact, it only enriches the story and gives the characters more personality and depth.

Another interesting thing about the movie is that there are no ‘bad guys’ or villains in the story. The protagonists aren’t exactly the good guys either. The characters are people with different circumstances and views of the world.

While I did enjoy the movie, I wouldn’t exactly call it a masterpiece. Sure, the story is well-written, the message is clear, the acting is great, and the editing and cinematography are outstanding, but it didn’t really blow me away like I thought it would. Despite the minor disappointment, I would still recommend the movie to anyone who hasn’t watched it yet.

Jocelyn Djohan

Grade 12 MIPA, Level A