What's that bad smell? Unfortunately the bad script and mediocre directing.

Rating: 3/10 (24 October 2019)

I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie. I didn't read too much about it, but watching the trailer and having seen this director's previous work 'The Host' and 'Snowpiercer', I was expecting something in the horror/sci-fi genre. But that's not what this movie was.
Sadly, whatever message the director Joon Ho Bong was trying to convey, it was lost in the tonally uneven mess of a script and direction, that starts off as a light hearted comedy, but then drags down into a dark and depressing disaster.
When the movie starts, we are shown a working class (more more like poor) family, the Kims, who seem to be hard on their luck. We see they work together folding pizza boxes (i don't see how the fumigated boxes were still good), to earn a few bucks.
Anyway, luck falls upon them when a friend of their son hooks him up with a sweet tutoring gig at the home of the Parks. And as the movie progresses, the members of the Kim family slowly insert themselves into aspects of the Parks lives.
Now, I think the intention was to portray this as some sort of social commentary and class struggle. But it definitely doesn't come across like this at all. All we see is The Kim family using tricks and deception to get their way, while the wealthy Park family, while a little naive, is portrayed as actually fairly nice. They don't mistreat any of their workers, they don't even do background checks on the Kim family (who are masquerading as non-related individuals). The father seems to be hard working, but is willing to take time off, along with the whole family, to take the young son out camping for his birthday.
The movie then takes a dark turn when we find out the husband of the previous maid was living in the basement of the home. Not as a prisoner, but of his own choice, to evade the law. Now, this turn of events is NOT a twist. I was expecting the twist to be more like it turns out the original architect/owner was locked down there, and the Park family was also a bunch of imposters.
Anyway, this movie devolves into scenes of violence where the Park father is killed, and really, I don't get why he had to die. His only crime was he didn't like a particular smell. It wasn't a metaphor for poor people, because poor people probably don't like smelly people either. It just seemed like the whole basement bunker/garden bloodbath was shoehorned in for the little 'twist' ending where we see the lights flickering on and off in the house because that's where the murderous Kim father chose to hide.
The whole movie premise was just bad, one dimensional characters who we never learn anything about, so we don't feel any sympathy, except maybe for the Park family who were too nice for their own good.
This movie really doesn't deserve the high praise it's been getting. It's a clumsy effort that doesn't execute it's themes very well. I just gave it a 3 because it's pretty to look at and some of the dialogue was funny. But as a whole, it's an unrewarding experience to sit through.