KiAnna Payton

October 9, 2022

Film Critique: Parasite (2019 Film)

T/TH 11:00-12:20 Class

 The movie in discussion is “Parasite (2019)” , a South Korean film

directed by Bong Joon-ho. Before watching this film I didn’t really know what

to expect because I’ve never watched a foriegn film before. This is also the

reason why I chose this film, I wanted to try to watch something completely

different from what I’m use to. I watched this film on Netflix in my room.

Parasite is a South Korean black comedy thriller film that portrays a family

of four that appears to be in poverty using their opportunistic and

manipulative qualities to take advantage of people to get what they want out

of life. This family is the protagonist of the film and the antagonist is society.

Though the family is obviously struggling financially, in the beginning the

production attempts to depict the family in a way that doesn’t really make

the audience feel sorry or empathetic towards them but draws attention

more to the fact that they will do what they have to in order to survive, even

if it’s munching off of others. The director probably didn’t want the audience

to think that poverty was the opposing force instead of society. The opening

scene shows the son of the family, Kim Ki Woo, scavenging around their

semi-basement home, trying to take advantage of the neighbors wifi. For

this reason I believe the choice of sad, slow music was not applied but a

rather soft and bright piano piece. In Parasite Joon-ho had the intention of

capturing the reality of the social hierarchy in the world, he does this

through the eyes of the impoverished Kim family.

 Ki Woo, the son of the Kim family, receives the opportunity to work as

a tutor for the rich Park family and with this opportunity he gets an inside

view of the class differences. This is where the set design comes into play.

The director illustrates this transition from one class to the other when Ki

Woo is walking to the house of the Park family. As Ki Woo exits the half-

basement home the camera turns to show the small, crammed alley-way

then suddenly changes to Ki walking towards the Park family’s house in this

huge alley, I believe this camera shift was intentional, showing the transition

of the two world. You can see a huge difference in the two home, compared

to the Park family the filthy old half basement the Kim family lives in is

barely a home. All the members of the Kim family get this first hand

experience of how easy some people have it in life one by one as they

manipulate their way into the Park family household.Kim Ki-Jeong which is

the daughter of the Kim family was a very important character when it came

to getting the Kim family into the home of the Park family. On her first day

as Da-song’s (the younger son of the Park family) art therapist, she was

already scheming to get her father, Ki-taek, a job from the family. Each time

any action of manipulation engaged by the Kim family occurs their is an

intensifying, upbeat, mysterious piano in the background. This and the dark

shadowy picture does a good job of keeping the audience intrigued and in a

way amplifying the manipulation as well as the mystery occurring.

 While watching Parisite I also picked up on the differences in ignorance

between the two families. Both, the wife and the husband of the Park family

are unaware of the real identities and situation of the Kim family because

they only talk on a superficial level. When the wife hires each member of the

family, she doesn’t do a background check, only relying on the word of the

recommender. They are also unaware of the fact that a poor couple is

literally living under them. This is significant because it is showing the rich

being unaware of the people below them, both physically and

metaphorically. The director captures this on camera for one, when it is

revealed that the old housekeepers husband is living under the house where

the Park family is living and also when Ki-Jeong, Ki-Taek, and Ki-Woo are

hiding from the Park family under the table when they return from camping.

Even the camera angles play apart in the status of who is below and who is

above. The camera rarely looks down on the rich, even when Park Dong-Ik

( the father of the Park family) got stabbed at the end, the camera didn’t

look down on him, but at a side angle. There are many scenes where the

camera angle is looking down on the members of the Kim family. This could

be an interpretation of the poor being looked down upon.

I believe that this film was worth watching and captured the

differences of lower and upper class as well as the perception of society in a

great way. Parasite did surprise me, while watching I honestly couldn’t tell
what would happen next. Even thought the story line was pretty complex I

don’t think there where any major holes in the plot, there was an open-

ended closing which I don’t really like but other than that it was a great film

that I would definitely recommend to anyone to watch.