Not my Movie of the Year

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2020)

Of the films in contention this year, I think I would have given Best Director and Best Picture awards to Quentin Tarantino and ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD - a sly 'revisionist' take on Tinseltown at the far end of its Golden Age. I can see that PARASITE is highly original and filled with ironical social commentary, but Best Picture? Nah.
It's hard to write about it without spoilers, but it's a tale of two Korean families, one rich and living in a hilltop mansion, the other struggling in a grimy basement below the bottom of the same hill. Crafty as well as envious, the poor people slowly (a bit too slowly, IMO) infiltrate the lives of the rich folk. When the plutocrats take off for a camping trip, things start to unravel.
The theme of the working class subverting the Upper Crust was brilliantly explored in Joseph Losey's THE SERVANT (1963), which did not morph from Social Drama into Horror territory. I think PARASITE has to be judged as a horror movie, since that's where it ends up. Set against the standards of Class-A horrors like PSYCHO and THE EXORCIST, I would not put PARASITE in their league. Good, yes, and clever, beautifully shot and edited (and acted), but not up there with The Best. Sorry!