Felt for everyone except the protagonists

Rating: 6/10 (3 February 2020)

Parasite starts out with a rather familiar gritty arthouse vibe. Some humor is sprinkled in as Ki-woo (Choi Woo-Shik) scans the ceiling and windows for some unprotected (or underprotected) wi-fi to steal as the unemployed family can't afford phone service and they need it to find work. Their partially underground dwelling is susceptible to various indignities from drunken pee and bug killing gasses to flood. When they do get a gig assembling pizza boxes, they can't seem to get it right for some reason. Their luck changes when Ki-woo's friend Min (Seo-joon Park) passes his tutoring job on to him. I little fib and a lot of confidence, and the money starts flowing in to the Kim family. But then he sees an in for his sister Ki-jung (So-dam Park). I suppose simply introducing her as his sister who is legitimately good at art might not have worked, so they go for a much bigger lie and paycheck. Greed is kicking in with head spinning intensity. Before long the family is doing things so atrocious, I started borderline hating the film. Because its protagonists are so unjustifiably vile. To be sure, I loved the parasite allegory. One gets in, starts multiplying, eventually severely damaging or destroying the host. That last part I was dreading the most. Yes, I was also dreading what will happen once the scam is discovered. But I felt really bad for the mother (Yeo-jeong Cho) who inadvertently brought the infestation into her home. She was just trying to do what any mother would - what's best for her kids. Her only fault - she wasn't too bright. Of course, I could have never anticipated the crazy plot twist that unraveled it all. But as the story rolled towards the end in a gut wrenching tangle of victims and perpetrators, the "host" family was treated as if their suffering were at best unimportant, at worst - funny. And they are the ones who did nothing wrong. Except for being rich - I suppose that automatically makes them villains. It was really bothering me. But that wasn't the only problem I had with the film. It didn't make sense to me how the Kims could come up with and perfectly execute an elaborate scheme, when they couldn't even assemble pizza boxes right. And if they are this smart, how is it possible that even the two young ones can't get work? Is Korean economy that bad? Another problem was that interesting things were introduced, but dropped without explanation. Like we never found out why the old housekeeper looked like she had been mugged. Or what Ki-woo was planning to do with the lucky stone. And that wonderful allegory that existed so naturally in the first half of the movie? Not completely gone in the second, but you have to look for it.