Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) remains the high-water mark of late-2010s genre filmmaking. A class-warfare comedy that turns into a horror movie that turns into an indictment — and the architecture is so precise you don’t notice the shift until the basement door opens.
Song Kang-ho as Kim Ki-taek anchors the film with weary dignity. The Park family is rendered without caricature — they’re not villains, they’re insulated. Cho Yeo-jeong as Yeon-kyo gives a comic performance of staggering precision.
Lee Ha-jun’s production design (the two houses) does half the storytelling. The peach scene. The basement. The rain. The kalbi-jjim. The film’s symbolic vocabulary is dense, but it never lectures.
Won four Oscars, including Best Picture — the first non-English-language film to do so. Deserved every one.
