Grade: A
There’s an unparalleled feeling I get when I realize I have just seen a truly great movie. It’s almost as special as discovering I’m in love. Call it a Cinematic Crush. For at least the first week after seeing it, I have an extra spring in my step, I hold it in my heart, and I’m bursting with desire to share how impactful the film was for me. To name a few, it happened with American Beauty, Silver Linings Playbook, Birdman, Whiplash, The Florida Project, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Toy Story 4, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Knives Out, and now I add Parasite to that list. It is the first Korean movie to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and now it is nominated for 6 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Bong Joon Ho), and Best International Feature Film.
Parasite starts off as a normal, innocuous, straightforward, unassuming film, and then gradually escalates, blossoms, and blooms into something so much greater until you can hardly believe not only what you’re seeing, but how triumphantly it all works. A family of four lives in a half-underground basement apartment. They have a steady-ish part-part-time job folding pizza boxes. They are well off enough to have smartphones, but have to steal internet from whatever WiFi network they can find. The son is able to fake a letter of recommendation from a university to get himself a job as a tutor for the teenage daughter of the Park family – hugely affluent, with a ridiculous house. I learn from the IMDB trivia that even though it was a set, director Bong Joon Ho was very nervous about touching any of the props. The Kims (the poor family) may be struggling, but they are smart and resourceful. The tutor tells Mrs. Park he just happens to know a good art therapist for their young son, and so they bring the sister from the struggling family on as an employee. One cunning thing leads to another, and the whole family ends up working for the Parks.
This is where I stop giving you plot. Parasite is billed as a comedy and a thriller, and it succeeds on both those levels, on sub-levels of those levels, and on more levels. Sometimes, it is the kind of comedy from lower brow gross-out movies like There’s Something About Mary and American Pie. Sometimes, it has the smart humor of Wag the Dog. Sometimes, it is the kind of thriller that will make you laugh and wonder how much worse things could possibly get, like Very Bad Things or The Hateful Eight. Sometimes, it is the kind of thriller that also makes a socio-political statement, like Us or Get Out. [“People who ride the subway have a special smell,” Mrs. Park says, in a line that stuck with me.] Sometimes, it is straight-up Hitchcockian, but can summon up dread without stooping to things or people jumping into the frame while the score gives a loud boom. It is better than all the movies I just named, and takes it to the limit with each of these territories, but stops just before it would have gone overboard into buffoonery. It exhilarated me, bewildered me, toyed with me, and I loved the way the film circled back around on itself. I would bet money that the beautiful second-to-last shot was inspired by The Shawshank Redemption. If there was ever a film that earned such a moment and homage, Parasite is it.
I read an effusively glowing review recently where the critic lamented that “masterpiece” and “I’ve/you’ve never seen anything like it” get tossed around so much, the effect gets lessened, no matter how much the writer still means it. As luck would have it, I have seldom – if ever – used those terms, so here I go. Parasite is a masterpiece. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll go even further: Parasite is one of the best movies I have ever seen.
Grade: A
Film Reviews by Mark 
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