Parasite

Rated TV-14

2 hours 12 minutes

Starring: Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo

I wasn’t planning on watching this one until it won almost everything at the Oscars this year, including Best Picture.  I don’t want to give spoilers, but the story starts out with a very poor family that is able to get themselves hired to be the servants of a rich family, posing as unrelated, qualified applicants.  They do this through tricking the rich family into firing each person one by one that works for them and getting themselves hired.  It almost feels like some sort of “heist” movie in the beginning.  Everything was going smoothly until the housekeeper that was let go returns while the owners are out of town and says she needs to get something out of the basement.  Besides the servants just hanging out at the house and acting like they own it while everyone is gone, and then the housekeeper showing up, they get a call that the owners are on their way home and are only 8 minutes away.  This is when the “real” movie starts and creates twists and turns I never saw coming.  The more deception there is and the more lies that are told, the more tangled up everything gets and just ratchets up the intensity all around!  As the film goes on, there is something from almost every genre of movie – comedy, drama, mystery, thriller, romance – you name it, it probably has it.  The language is in Korean, so it was a little different reading subtitles for the whole movie, but I got used to it.  Not sure if I would have picked it for Best Picture (think I would have gone with Joker), but it was a decent movie with a good story and a lot of suspense if that’s what you like.  Glad I watched it!

Library Link: Parasite (DVD)