“Parasite” is a movie that follows the impoverished Kim family’s journey to infiltrating the wealthy Park family’s home and life.

Personal opinion:

Rating: 8.35/10

The film was masterfully woven to utilize space and color to create a parallel between the wealthy family and the poor family. With colors like gold, yellow, pearly whites and saturated colors contrasting the blues, grays, and bleak dark colors. As a movie enthusiast, I admired many of the deliberate choices that the director took. For example, the lighting being soft and serene with the rich family whereas the lighting becomes dim and muddy with the poor family. Secondly, the direction the actors took with their expressions that made audiences believe the movie was a surface-level comedy. Lastly, and the most deliberate of all. The ram-don instant noodles (jjapaguri) that highlighted the overarching premises of the movie… social inequality and wealth disparity.

I enjoyed the soft comedic tone that was leading the film but what I loved the most was the sudden (but intentional) switch to a different genre (suspense horror) nearing the end of the movie. When i began to watch the movie all the spoilers I had seen over the past 4 years disappeared and I thought to myself “Is this the wrong movie?” I was almost certain as the movie changed its direction on 3 to 4 occasions leaving the audience to guess. Many people interpreted the film differently. In my case, the “parasite” of the movie was not just the poor family leeching off the rich family. It was also the rich family whose comfort was reliant on the lower class they were persistently employing to the extent of extreme naivety.

On the flip side, however, there are various plights with the movie I had. The very reasons I did not rate the movie a 10/10 or even a 9/10 was because the film — despite its’ seemingly complex nature, lacked depth in both its characters, their motivations and the defining of class dynamics. The Kim family was depicted as a bunch purely driven by their economic desires not so much their own personal motivations that COULD have manifested. We saw many glimpses of the lack of depth in this movie. Whether it was the extremely oversimplified view of socioeconomic struggles, or the cheap tactics utilized to introduce danger, suspense, or anything besides humor.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie to a certain extent. There were many factors that made me love the movie and some factors that contributed to me analyzing and criticizing parts of the movie. I would recommend this film to anyone looking for an enjoyable slightly dark movie that leaves you pondering real life issues that continue to worsen especially in the U.S. I for one will be thinking about this movie for quite a while.