Review of Parasite (2019) by Bkorras — 23 Nov 2019

You know a movie's good when you wind up having a dream about it. The last movie that affected me that way was Akira Kurosawa's Ran. The latest to affect me that way is Bong Joon Ho's Parasite. The only other movie I've seen from Bong is Snowpiercer, a film that dealt with the issues of class inequality, in Parasite he returns to this theme, but this time he plays it from a very realistic angle. Bong captures the tension of class disparity superbly, blending grittiness, humour and horror, and striking imagery that completely immerses you in the world he created. The actors all do a superb job, especially Kang Ho-Song, who best exemplifies through his performance, what it feels like to be on the less-fortunate end of the class spectrum. The writing is superb too, in particular how it portrays the struggle to move up the class ladder, using both the optimistic practicality of "planning" and pessimistic impracticality of "dreaming", in a hard-hitting way. This movie forces you to ride the wave with our main characters, all the way up, and down.

The cinematography is beautiful, and the images composed superbly. The way the cinematography captures the architecture of our more-fortunate characters home is breathtaking, so is their lifestyle. No wonder our main characters plot and dream of being in that position, who wouldn't want to be?. The score stands out too. At times it gets super eerie and spacy and combined with the imagery, it helps produce the feeling that you are in a fever dream, and trust me, when the sh*t hits the fan in this, it's a fever dream and then some. I highly recommend this hard-hitting bit of cinema.