Mark Reviews Movies: PARASITE (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 17, 2019

The hilarious, thrilling, and thought-provoking Parasite is a master class of tone control. Co-writer/director Bong Joon Ho has crafted a film that's easy to describe but difficult to categorize. It's a comedy, yes, and quite a dark one at that. It's also a thriller of the more traditional variety, in that its thrills come from some poor or morally questionable decisions on the part of its characters. As the deceptions and the schemes pile up, these characters find themselves going deeper and deeper into a morass of their own creation.

The film is much more than either a comedy or a thriller, too. This is a smorgasbord of a film, in terms of its methods, its goals, and its ideas. The reason all of this works as well as it does—as a cohesive vision and as an exhilarating experience—is that Bong and co-writer Han Jin Won's screenplay focuses on a single idea: desperation. Every character here is desperate in his or her own way, with varying degrees of being worthy of sympathy.

That single idea, though, blooms multitudes. The biggest discrepancy among the characters is one of class, as a poor family's struggle to keep their heads above water (literally, at one point) is juxtaposed against the seemingly entitled whims of a wealthy family. Those two families come together, without the rich one even knowing that it has happened, and become inextricably bound.

We laugh at the audacity of the impoverished family, as they scheme their way into what could be a potentially comfortable life. We laugh at the rich family's petty entitlement, as they seem to want for nothing but continue to find things to fix, and social naiveté, as they unwittingly let themselves be scammed—the fallout of a single lie they didn't even bother to check.

Throughout the film, Bong continually subverts our sympathies—making us question why we connect to certain characters, reminding us why we did, and then starting the process again. At first, we're rooting for the poor and scrappy underdogs against the privileged and judgmental members of the upper class. Around the midpoint, though, the screenplay introduces a major complication into the plot and that outlook on these characters and their social statuses.

At that point, we're reminded that that every underdog has the upper hand on at least one other person. That's especially true in an economic system in which the "winners" get so much they don't know what to do with themselves, while the "losers" battle for whatever scraps are left over.

There aren't many scraps for the Kim family, who live in a semi-basement apartment, where the window looks out on a street that's regularly used as a bathroom by a local drunk. Like the whole of the family, Ki-taek (Song Kang Ho), the father, and Chung-sook (Chang Hyae Jin), the mother, are unemployed. The son Ki-woo (Choi Woo Shik) scrambles around the apartment to find free wireless internet in a neighboring apartment or store. The daughter Ki-jung (Park So Dam) is a talented artist. While both of the children could go to college, the family can't afford it on the odd jobs they find.

Enter Ki-woo's old friend Min (Park Seo Joon), who arrives with a gift—a rock that some believe grants material wealth to its possessor—and an opportunity. Min will be studying abroad, and someone will have to replace him as the tutor for a high school girl from the wealthy Park family. The girl's mother Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo Jeong) trusts Min (although he has a plan to date the girl when she's old enough), so Ki-woo is a shoo-in for the gig. Just in case, he has his sister forge a document stating that he's in college. Yeon-kyo, though, doesn't even bother to look at it.

Thus, Ki-woo begins tutoring Da-hye (Jung Ziso) and discovers that the Parks' younger, seemingly troubled son Da-song (Jung Hyun Joon) likes to draw. Obviously, Ki-woo knows an artist who could be the boy's teacher, so he mentions his sister—only as "Jessica," a friend of a cousin. Ki-jung takes advantage by declaring herself an art therapist with a significant fee.

Quickly, she creates a chance for her father—not mentioning her relationship to the Parks, of course—to gain employment as the driver of Park patriarch Dong-ik (Lee Sun Kyun). From there, well, it should be clear that Chung-sook needs to work for the Parks, too.

The tactics employed by the Kims become less innocent (Ki-woo plans to go to college, after all) and more severe (For all the family knows, the last one, involving a food allergy, could be deadly) as they progress. From the story's start, the film's title seems to suggest the Kim family. Indeed, with their initial hunt for free internet and the eventual plan to infiltrate every aspect of the Parks' lives for a paycheck, they certainly seem to feeding off whatever host they can find (There's also the thought that the actual parasites are the Parks, who feed off the basic needs of the Kims to live with even more comfort, and if both of these ideas can be true, maybe the real parasite is something else).

Even so, we can't help but admire this family, for their ingenuity and dedication to the con, and almost pity them, for how simple and understandable their dreams are. Hence, we can laugh with them, as their plan comes together, and be terrified as that key snag comes into the picture, threatening to ruin everything.

The second act begins with an extended sequence of complications and revelations, which leads to a series of fights, chases, and cover-ups. In it, the Kims have decided to take advantage of the Parks' absence for the weekend. Just when they learn about a secret room and a secret occupant of the house, Yeon-kyo calls, saying they family will be home in a matter of minutes.

It's a virtuoso piece of timing, stagecraft, and editing. In a visceral and impossible-to-ignore way, though, the sequence also forces us to confront the actual cost of the Kim family's deceptions, as well as the extent to which they'll go to maintain this new way of life. Bong doesn't just make us worried that they'll be caught. He horrifies us with what they do to ensure they aren't, and just to further play with our expectations, the filmmaker injects a playfully macabre sense of humor into the whole process.

Somehow, even with the majority of Parasite going for laughs and horror and social satire and the excitement of not knowing what could come next, Bong and Han's screenplay closes with a genuinely heartbreaking finale. That should seem impossible, considering everything that happens—both in terms of plot and tone—to build up to that moment, but such is Bong's mastery of this material. He plays it like a well-tuned and properly maintained fiddle, and we just have to go along with the music.

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