A film of two halves...

Rating: 7/10 (18 February 2020)

I very much enjoyed the first half of this movie. The premiss that a family of grifters manage to infiltrate a pretty vacuous wealthy family by pretending to be, initially, a qualified English teacher, then an off-the-wall art teacher; a chauffeur and finally a housekeeper is original, funny and harmless. The humorous and mischievous way the family gel with their ambitions for a better life is a testament to the excellent performances from the four the principal characters. Regrettably, however, the second half descends quite rapidly into a farcical story that drags it down. Their harmless deception takes on a far more sinister - and implausible - guise as we quite literally discover (living) bodies under the stairs. It's now almost slapstick; ultimately violent and Bong Joon Ho now just seems to have lost his way. Yeo-jeong Jo is good, too, as the wealthy wife and I would heartily highly recommend this film, but it is - in my opinion - nowhere near as good as "Mother".