Kritiken

Its refusal to see out the contract of the blockbuster and deliver the world-saving (and audience-saving) plan offers a curious, welcome release for the audience, rich and poor alike: Parasite takes you into an abyss that is also your abyss but tells you that it will not deliver you.

This year’s big [Oscar] winner, Parasite, confirms that the Academy’s basic history of film-industry acclamation has always been a matter of celebrityhood, mitigated by the memory of real glamour, and combined with airhead simple-mindedness.

Denying that Bong’s work was leading to this galvanizing movie which has really shocked people into further questioning the wealth gap and understanding the precariousness of the urban underclass in an era of climate change was reactionary in some kind of new pop culture way.

This really is a horribly fascinating film, brilliantly written, superbly furnished and designed, with a glorious ensemble cast put to work in an elegantly plotted nightmare.

Given that much of the action unfolds in the confines of the Parks’ designer mansion, the film’s chamber scale would seem at first glance to be a smaller canvas for Bong, yet somehow it accesses a broader span of human understanding, as its consistently surprising narrative flirts with myriad genre expectations to deftly beguiling effect.

Tonally, the film also makes giant leaps—from very funny, caustic black comedy to blood-drenched terror to a kind of rueful meditativeness in the epilogue.

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is full of heat but bereft of fire, delivering only the smoke of one prematurely extinguished.

This economical style gives way to a dramatic slowing down to allow for the final blow to be dealt, and for Bong to leave us with memories of murder once more—when, for a few catastrophic moments, everyone is finally, devastatingly equal.

Bong has a very clear purpose, sees exactly what he’s doing, and does it with a directness that is itself deadening: his messaging is so on point, his rhetoric so rigid, that there’s hardly anything left untethered to allow the viewer imaginative freedom.

Parasite’s unique power is in the humanity and urgency of its ideas, wedded as they are to a plot and a directorial style full of clever visual winks and moments of slapstick humor, as well as sly social asides that even the most astute viewers might miss on the first pass.

Bong’s command of the medium is thrilling. He likes to move the camera, sometimes just to nudge your attention from where you think it should be, but always in concert with his restlessly inventive staging.

Bong’s framing and pacing is a marvel of astute visual cues and narrative push.