Despite having a few friends tell me that I had to see Parasite, I just blew it off. However, once Parasite started cleaning up at the Academy Awards, I knew I was an idiot and needed to check it out. This is a South Korean movie that is a bit of a thriller, a bit of a comedy and a bit of a mystery all rolled into one unforgettable package.
How to Stream or Download Parasite (2019)
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The Movie Review
The movie is directed and written by Bong Joon-ho who also was responsible for the phenomenal movie The Host from 2006. The movie has a great ensemble cast and it is honestly impossible for me to pick just one standout performance as this is one of those rare movies where everyone involved is firing on all cylinders.
Hmm, talking about Parasite is really tough as I went into this movie knowing very little, apart from the fact it won the main Oscar. I knew that it was about a family pretending to be something that they are not, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. I am going to give the basics of the plot and I recommend if you have still not seen it, to read as little as you can about it before you watch it.
The movie is about this very poor family called The Kim’s they are just scraping through life and are quite poor. Ki-Woo the son, wants more from life and thinks that his luck is in when his friend gets him to pretend, he is a university student so that he can tutor a wealthy family’s daughter in English. It makes for a fun and tense situation seeing him try to pull this off.
Now, this may sound easy enough to pull off, but things go off the rails when the whole Kim family decides to weasel their way into this wealthy family’s life and get jobs working for them! On paper, I know that the plot of Parasite does not sound like anything special, but boy does this movie keep you on the edge of your seat for its entire runtime, you never know what the heck is going to happen next!
Things are greatly complicated as there is already a housekeeper here and they need to get rid of her. One of the things that this movie does very well is that there is no clear hero or villain here. You can pretty much see things from everyone’s side and there are parts of the movie that will make you laugh, parts that will make you sad, and some that will have your jaw hit the floor.
There are many movies that get critical acclaim that are greatly overrated, but I have to say that Parasite is not one of them. This is a fantastic movie and the kind that is awesome to talk about with others that have seen it. I thought that it would be the kind of movie I would not want to watch again, but I watched it again and noticed a few things I mussed on the first viewing so you will want to watch this a few times.