*This movie is bananas

IMDB Synopsis

All unemployed, Ki-taek’s family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

Okay Juicers, I am going to make a confession. I am not a huge foreign movie guy, but I am absolutely trying. I saw The Farewell earlier this year, I saw Pain & Glory (review coming soon) and I saw Parasite. Parasite is the newest movie from acclaimed Director Bong Joon-ho. I was excited to learn about this guy and I will be diving into his filmography soon because I LOVED this movie.

Parasite is a story about a family who slowly embeds themself with a wealthy across the town. The do this by slowly taking over all the positions in the household. They maneuver the son to become the tutor, they maneuver the daughter as another tutor, they bring in their dad as the driver and the mom as the maid. Now they have to do some bad (but sometimes funny) things in order to achieve this, but the movie does a great job of making it seem natural.

The true greatness in this movie though lies in the tone. The way Joon-ho maneuvers your emotions from laughing to freaking out between scenes is unlike you see in very many movies. The way it is paced only only helps that tone because they never linger on anything which makes bouncing from the suspense to the comedy so easy. The tone also helps balance the class commentary throughout the movie. Clearly the director wants people to understand natural life in Korea and commenting on the classes was the best way to do that.

Stock Watch

Stock Up – Bong Joon-ho made waves with Okja and he is continuing the hot streak as I said above. This guy just seems like a Kubrick type where his movies really try to put a spin on genres, from what I have read. This was a masterclass in filmmaking and I will watch anything he does from now on. I mean look at him he clearly has cool friends…

 

*A couple other tidbits

• When you first see the maid hanging from the wall pushing the bookcase you are like WTF. Easily second best WTF moment this year behind Midsommar.
• The romance between the son and daughter of the two families was a little weird.

Parasite is easily the biggest surprise of the year for me, and I honestly wish people could make more movies like this. Yeah its not 100% perfect but its original and was gripping from start to finish. This is me telling you Parasite is a good movie…

Juice Rating:

*You can find all of my Movie Ratings here.