Opens well only to become an epic fail

Rating: 2/10 (17 April 2020)

As a fan of foreign films I was excited to watch this after its Oscar success, but unfortunately it collapsed in its second half -- so badly I had to abandon viewing it.
The opening of the film, introducing the starving Kim family and their machinations to secure work as the household staff of the Park family. It beautifully demonstrates the life in the city slums, with superbly executed plots to get the Parks' existing staff fired and replaced with the Kims. These plots become progressively more cruel, showing the Kims' slide into villainy.
The complication arrives when the former head maid asks the Kims if she can retrieve something from the Park house. Here the Kims truly become villains, manipulating the secrets of the house for their own gain and even turning to overt violence to preserve their position. It is here that the film loses its way.
Though certainly the Kims and their rivals have difficult choices to make, they are depicted as being gratuitously cruel. Each faction needs to remove obstacles, of course; each faction shows no restraint, fine. But the film lingers on this wickedness for so long, the audience becomes estranged to all of them. We no longer care about ANY of these characters because they have all become monsters; we abandon watching their fight because we have better things to do with our lives.
The failure of this film (as with so many of the last few decades) is in the writing and editing. The sets are beautiful, the camerawork superb. But the film lingers on human suffering purely for the shock factor. The suffering of the Kims is sadly reality for those at the bottom of South Korean society, and desperation makes villains of us all, but this is not a documentary. This is meant to be entertainment, something people can enjoy. Angela's Ashes depicted similar levels of poverty yet still maintained the sympathy of the audience.