'Parasite' (15)

*****

A poor family infiltrates the lives of their rich counterpart with disastrous consequences.

You've undoubtedly heard of Parasite by now, but if you've somehow missed the furore about this strange, disturbing drama, allow me to bring you somewhat up to speed. Back in the summer of 2019, it picked up the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and rocketed into the spotlight. Since then, it's made history by becoming the first South Korean film to ever be nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards and, at last night's SAG Awards, it shocked the cinematic world by collecting the accolade of Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (yeah, quite the mouthful!). Oh, it also picked up Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes and has a handful of nominations for the BAFTAs. Phew!

So, what's all the fuss about? In the opening few moments, we meet a family that's fallen upon hard times - all four of them are unemployed and living in a barely habitable basement. There's a charming montage at the beginning of the film where we see the siblings fighting for the smallest scrap of Wi-Fi, before the family sits down to fold pizza boxes together - it's a simple sequence, but one that tells us everything we need to know about this tight-knit family and their situation. By chance, Kim (the son, played by Woo-sik Choi) finds himself tutoring English to the daughter of a rich family, the Parks, and soon his sister, mother and father have ingratiated themselves into the lives of their very wealthy counterparts. And that's when a wholly unexpected and rather alarming twist happens. To say anything more would give away a revelation that I never saw coming, but be prepared to feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when the reveal happens.

There's a great deal of striking imagery to be seen here. Most affecting for me was the positioning of the Park house, a bright, airy and almost heavenly space that sits at complete odds with the Kim household. The Kims are always seen climbing the stairs to the Park's home, as if ascending from their squalid lifestyle (their home is literally underground, at the bottom of a steep set of stairs) to the sanctuary of this open edifice where the sun shines upon the back garden. Similarly, whenever we see the Kims within the Park house, they are rarely seated at the same level - in one scene, they sit upon the floor to eat instead of the chairs, and are then depicted beneath the furniture whilst the wealthy occupants sit above. All this, of course, is director Bong Joon-Ho's not-so-subtle commentary on the class war that South Korea, and much of the developed world, experience.

Parasite isn't necessarily a scary film (although there are undoubtedly horror-inflected moments throughout), but it does manage to get under your skin in a somewhat uncomfortable way. From the very beginning, I was immersed in the life of the Kims and, for all the controversy of their actions, I wanted for them to succeed. The tension builds and builds until it's almost unbearable, finally snapping in a twist that's really rather shiver-inducing. This one might stay with you longer than you thought...

From the ubiquitously excellent cast, to the outstanding script, stunning cinematography and excellent direction, Parasite is surely already one of the year's standout films. Fusing social commentary with black humour, Bong Joon-Ho has created a film that's both entertaining and thought-provoking - there are few films that will set your moral compass spinning in quite the same way. In short - believe the hype and see it now.