“Parasite”

The Kims are a smart family living in poverty, but have a knack of being resourceful and getting their day to day essentials by any way necessary. When an opportunity comes for the son to tutor the daughter of a very rich family, the Parks, he takes the job and shortly later, he’s able to get his sister a job in the family as a therapist for their young son. Then by some creative planning, they’re able to get the dad employed as the driver and the mom as the housekeeper. All 4 of them are working under different names and the Parks have no idea that they’re all from the same family. This whole aspect of the film is brilliant and it works for quite a while. Then one evening as the Parks are out on a weekend trip, the Kims are living it up in their house only to get a knock on the door to wrench in the whole operation. The film takes a very dark turn at this point and some of the fun of the fist 90 minutes go out the window. The movie becomes more of a thriller at this point, but still works and you need to start thinking about things as they slowly happen in the film. The writing is really good. The movie is funny at times and very clever. You really want to root for this family to succeed despite them sponging off this family in secrecy. But the Parks are no prizes either. They’re gullible but they completely take advantage of their new employees. There are some underlying messages all over this movie and you can discuss what they are after seeing the film.

Rating: (***1/2)