Bong Joon Ho with his Palme Dor Award for Parasite (2019)

I saw Snowpiercer before I ever knew who Bong Joon Ho was, with my initial viewing of Memories of Murder not coming until last fall, at which point I fell in love with his work. The man knows how to make movies. Going into this, all I had heard was extremely high praise from across the board, but again, had no idea what the actual plot of the film was or what the genre was. With a name like Parasite and seeing the poster for this, I assumed it was going to be either a thriller or a horror film, and then it ended up being arguably one of the funniest films of the year. Within the first minutes of the film, I found myself laughing consistently with there being such a great handle of comedy from the get-go. I bought into this deception…

When I say this movie is funny, I mean it is laugh-out-loud hilarious at various points throughout, so when that late game genre shift hits, it hits hard. The biggest (and perhaps strangest) comparison I can think of is Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, in that for the entire first 2/3 of the film, it treats itself as a straightforward science fiction piece before morphing into a slasher film. While this is neither of those things, I could not help myself from drawing the comparison to it, though Parasite handles the flip undeniably better. There are probably better films to compare this two, hell you could just compare and contrast this to other films by Bong Joon Ho himself if you wanted, but I am rambling now. The takeaway here is that Parasite is outstandingly funny at times before hitting a major shift in tone and narrative that feels like a genuine magic trick.

The cinematography is as excellent as can be, with nearly every frame of the film feeling perfectly crafted. So many scenes are elevated by the great direction and cinematography, whether it be the “Bloody Napkin” sequence, the first time we enter the basement, or the entirety of the “Under the Table” scene, these are all well done scenes, but the camerawork takes them to that next level. Speaking on the aforementioned “Bloody Napkin” sequence, outside of the Portals scene in Avengers: Endgame and the Murray Franklin scene in Joker, this may be the best sequence in a film in 2019 (it probably beats those two as well, I have just had more time to sit with them and have seen them multiple times). I can genuinely say that I have never been as tense or nervous during a comedy than I was watching Parasite, and that comes down to the direction from Bong Joon Ho.

Gif from Parasite (2019)

As good as the cinematography and direction might be, without strong performances, the film would fall apart and boy does this movie have some excellent acting. The main cast is made up of; Kang-ho Song, Yeo-jeong Jo, So-dam Park, Woo-sik Choi, Sun-kyun Lee, Ji-so Jung, Jeong-eun Lee, and Hyae Jin Chang. There is a good chance you have never seen or heard of the majority of these names if you do not watch foreign films, with Kang-ho Song being the only actor I recognized in the film, however by the end nearly every one of the key cast had left a strong impression, namely Woo-sik Choi as Kim Ki-woo and So-dam Park as Kim Ki-jung. Everyone involved nails their comedic timing to a tee, and even the more emotional/thrilling scenes as well.

Kang-Ho Song in Snowpiercer (2013)

Fun Fact: Kang-ho Song stars as Ki-Taek in this film also stars in a few of Bong Joon Ho’s other films, namely Snowpiercer as Namgoong Minsoo and Memories of Murder as Detective Park Namgoong Minsoo, both of which are brought into this film as clear Easter Eggs, with Namgoong being the name of the architect who built the house that the Park family lives in, with the Park family name clearly being a reference to Detective Park.