Parasite Review by Brandon Williams

It has been just over five years since Parasite arrived in British cinemas. Already riding a wave of critical acclaim, it had accrued a Palme D’Or and six Oscar nominations that would later be turned into four awards, including Best Picture.

By 2020, director Bong Joon-ho, who also took home Best Director that year, had built a revered twenty year career, with films like Memories of a Murder and The Host earning him a reputation as one of modern cinema’s most thoughtful and gutsy auteurs. Ventures into English language scripts with Snowpiercer and Okja continued his genre-blending explorations into class division and capitalism, which remained very much front and centre as he headed back to his native South Korea for his seventh feature.

Set in Seoul, Parasite follows the Kim family as they each infiltrate their way into the affluent Park family’s household after the son, Ki-Woo, is given the opportunity to become a tutor for them. His sister becomes their art therapist, his father the driver, and his mother the housekeeper – all of which they attain through deception and gradually insidious means.

But the Kim’s are desperately poor, living in a basement flat (known as Banjiha) and folding pizza boxes for meagre wages – a way of life the Park family knows nothing about and seemingly detest. The Kim’s are driven by dreams of replicating the financial freedom the Park’s enjoy. And although it’s certainly the case that the Kims seek to exploit their richer, more gullible counterparts to attain that, the Parks are also dining off using workers to complete menial tasks and schoolwork, and so this parasitic nature works both ways. Guerrilla class warfare if you will.

The prized house the Park family occupies offers a microcosm of the society at large that Bong is critiquing. There’s the pretence of sophistication and luxury on top while a dark labyrinth of suffering lurks beneath, which the out-of-touch Park’s are oblivious to but it is the setting for infighting between the Kim’s and Moon-gwang, the housekeeper they usurp who is also very poor. Despite the similarity in their economic struggles, there is little solidarity between them.

Parasite is a film that not only remains remarkable upon repeat viewing, but, with its hefty social commentary, has become even more relevant in a post-pandemic, cost of living crisis world, where wealth has become more concentrated and economic stability for middle and working class people is increasingly scarce. It is also stark viewing in light of South Korea’s recent medical and political crises – both of which contributed to President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly declaring martial law last December. Moreover, the Banjiha flats have been phased out after multiple deaths in 2022 due to flooding in the capital. Though, as Bong shows, one family’s home-destroying rainstorm is another family’s ruined camping trip.

Parasite bleeds with tension throughout. Not just through its themes of social struggle, but through its tight script, – co-written by Bong and Han Jin-won – which frames the film as a domesticated thriller, and its impeccable ensemble performance (if there are any lingering injustices from its Oscar success, the lack of any acting nominations is certainly one). It’s a film that, while essential viewing on its release, has only grown in strength through the years and will likely continue to do so.

Parasite is at the Torch Theatre at 14:00 on Friday 21st March as part of the Warm Spaces season. Bong Joon-ho’s latest film Mickey 17 begins showing later the same day. For further information, click here.