Parasite

Bong Joon Ho has been a household name in Asian cinema since the early noughties and it wasn’t really until this decade when larger Western audiences started to pay more attention to one of the best director/writers working today. With his two previous films, Okja and Snowpiercerboth being prominently in English, he returned to his roots with his newest feature Parasite, a film spoken in Korean with an all-Asian cast.
 
It didn’t throw any of his fans off, having already barricaded pass ‘the one-inch wall of subtitles’ as Bong Joon Ho so rightly put it after his Golden Globe win for Best International Film. With its world premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, it took the film community by storm, winning the Palme d’Or and becoming the first Korean film to do so. Critics and audiences alike have hailed this as ‘the best of the decade’ and with each passing month, the consensus has gotten larger with agreement.
 
Parasite centres on the Kim family, a family struggling to make ends meet living in a semi-basement apartment and working low-paying temporary jobs. Their son, Ki-Woo is gifted a scholar’s rock by his friend who is now leaving to study abroad. The gift is supposed to bring them wealth and before he goes, he suggests to Ki-Woo that he should pose as a university student and take over his job as an English tutor for the wealthy Park family’s teenage daughter. As he does so, the Kim family slowly start to become ever closer to the Park’s, wishing for the lavish lifestyle that they live. However they aren’t the only ones and a secret remained hidden to everyone is then revealed, with shocking complications.
 
Bong Joon Ho has created a film that will be discussed for generations, it is currently rated the greatest film of all time on Letterboxd, a popular social media app for film-lovers (just topping The Godfather). Although more can be said about this film, it’s wise to note that the less you know going in, the more enjoyment you’ll gain from the pure masterclass in storytelling from one of the best around. If you’ve never really given foreign films a chance, due to subtitles or differences in acting across cultures, Parasiteis by far the perfect place to start. A film that has so much to say about the erasure of the middle-class as well as being a high-stakes thriller and black comedy.  
 
Parasite comes to UK cinemas on February 7th.
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Jo Yeo-Jeong, Choi Woo-sik, Park So-dam