Parasite (2019)

Parasite (2019)

6/10

Starring

Song Kang-ho

Lee Sun-kyun

Cho Yeo-jeong

Choi Woo-shik

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

Parasite, for me, is another movie that swept the Oscars and has me wondering why.
The movie is thrilling but underwhelming. The Kim family has a way of infiltrating a home and taking full possession of it without thinking about the repercussions their actions will have on the people they chase out. My own challenge with the movie is how easily they were able to infiltrate the home—and then how easily they lost it.

I watched the movie without reading anything about it first. All I knew was that it swept the Oscars in major categories.
Well, in your case of reading this review, here’s a bit of what this dark-comedy dramatic thriller is about.

The Kim family is made up of a father, mother, son, and daughter. They are scam artists and freeloaders. The son gets an opportunity to land a job based on a friend’s recommendation to teach English to a young lady. The lady is the daughter of the Parks, a rich family of four, similar to the Kims.

The moment the Kims’ son was in the door, the scam began. One person was all the Kim family needed before each member soon infiltrated the Park family’s home.
After fully integrating into the home, the Kim family is surprised to discover a secret in the Park family’s house. This secret, which they stumble into, feels like a challenge to their claim over the Park family’s home.

The movie resolves this challenge with violence. The violence starts small but escalates out of control in a way that made me see why the Kim family can’t fully infiltrate a home—that’s one way of looking at it. Another way is that the director and script failed in that aspect. Maybe it’s just me, but for a family of “parasites” like that, I expected better control, better preemptive action, and quicker on-the-spot decisions. I felt the script failed to justify the Kims’ actions when they discover the secret in the house.

For me, this movie may have swept the Oscars, but it didn’t deliver the needed thrill of a Best Picture or Best Director winner. While it gained recognition and nominations in other notable awards, only the Oscars caved into trying to create a buzz.
The movie, like I said, is good—but not as good as the Oscars made it out to be. I do not understand why it won awards and is celebrated as much as it is.