Don't (completely) believe the hype

Rating: 7/10 (11 February 2020)

I think the only reason I was mildly disappointed with this film was all the hype, including of course the Oscar win.
If I'd stumbled upon this foreign-language (to me) film, I would have been, I'm sure, thoroughly delighted and surprised.
But given that it's supposedly THE BEST FILM of all those released in the last 12 months, well, I find myself in unexpected agreement with Joan Collins, an Academy member, who on Britain's morning GMB show said she thought it was a good film; just not The Best Film (although she also admitted to not having watched the last 20 mins, as it got a bit 'dark' - I assume she meant emotionally, not visually - and she was having trouble with the subtitles on her apparently tiny TV screen. Get a 60-inch, Joan, if you're being asked to vote!)
It surely does twist and turn, and goes from a light-hearted, almost Ealing comedy vibe, into a slasher in the woods horror flick. The acting is great. The characters, on the whole, believable, but as the closing credits rolled, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.
Why?
Well, I'm probably in a minority with Joan here, but I guess it was the whole story arc that left me unsatisfied. I would have been more satiated with an ending that allowed the nice, though slightly moralistically-challenged poor 'parasites' to get their rewards, while at the same time allowing the rich, privileged class to see the error of their ways. The rich folk here were, as far as I could see, perfectly nice people, apart from objecting politely to the smell of their poorer employees. Did they deserve all they got? I don't think so.
That's perhaps just a reflection of different story-telling techniques around the world. Maybe here in the UK/US we expect Disneyfied Hollywood endings, and this was not one of those. I still can't see quite why the dad/chauffeur decided to stab his employer to death. I can't see how the son of the poorer family survived two enormous blows to his scalp with a sizeable rock, with nothing to show for it than a temporary frontal lobe syndrome that made him laugh and smile uncontrollably, until, for no explained reason, that symptom disappeared when he was looking at news footage of the 'crime scene'.
Those details left me feeling uncomfortable, and less than satisfied.
Was it just the Hollywood zeitgeist that got this film the Oscar? Let's give it to a foreign language film for the first time, they said. That'll - if not silence our critics, then at least give them something to chew on. That's probably unfair, but, for instance, Rocketman sent me on a far more roller-coaster emotional ride than Parasite did. For me, it was easily a better film.