Very Good, but Too Safe for Greatness

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2019)

I very much enjoyed this film. It wasn't particularly different than a lot of other dark comedies I have seen, but it was very well made and entertaining. I was hooked from the very beginning, when during the fumigation scene our anti-hero protagonists are likened to stink bugs.
The first part of the film is a very clever dark comedy, planted with seeds of the trouble to come.
Then we hit a point in the film when Bong Joon-ho steers the film from comedy towards a more tragic end. My only criticism is the film does not fully commit to this darker direction.
The garden party scene was the perfect opportunity for Bong Joon-ho to go for a Tarantino-style bloody onslaught that would have had the crowd cheering in their seats. Or Miike-style shock-fest that would have had us covering our eyes while gleefully reveling in the gruesomeness. The film could have ended right there, on a high note, without losing momentum to a gratuitous denouement. Instead, I would have loved to have seen end credits rolling over stills of "artwork" by the sole garden party massacre survivor, the doubly-traumatized Park Da-song.
I would have liked that.
But the ending didn't reach for any extremes. It was good, but just a bit too safe for my personal taste. I hope Bong Joon-ho pushes the boundaries a bit more in his next film!