YMMV / Parasite (2019)

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• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • It's easy to read the Kim family as either Villain Protagonist characters who are lying, cheating, and stealing from an innocent family or I Did What I Had to Do in order to survive a terrible economic situation. Certainly, they seem to start from a place where their lies are seemingly harmless before getting much darker. There's also the fact that the Kims actively sabotage and work against their fellow working-class Koreans. The director confirmed that the ambiguity of their portrayal was intentional.
  • The Park Family patriarchs are people who can be viewed as Asshole Victim types given their affluenza and general disdain for the poor. Certainly, they seem horribly unaware that the rainstorm nearby has caused lots of people in Seoul to be displaced from their homes. However, it's also possible to view them as Spoiled Sweet since they only fire people after the Kims have framed them. Driven by desperation or not, they're the Butt-Monkey of the movie as both their employees' families try to take advantage of them.
  • Is Mrs. Park a Rich Bitch and Brainless Beauty or is she just incredibly bored as well as in a Gilded Cage? When she sits down with her daughter's English tutoring lesson, some viewers interpreted her as just wanting to do something for herself.
  • While both the Kim and Gook families are equally as bad and have similar, selfish motives, one can make the case that the Kims arguably have less blood on their hands as Gook Geun-Sae was responsible for triggering an epileptic seizure that nearly killed Da-song, and Moon-Gwang still enabled him to live in the Park household.
  • Some fans view Da-song as spoiled or thinking that he was above helping the poor as he kept receiving Morse code messages from Geun-se yet never did anything about them. At the same time, he's only six and might not have realized what was going on. It's also possible that he told someone else but was dismissed, as this happens elsewhere in the film.
  • Ki-woo returns to the bunker with scholar's rock in hand, but his reason for doing so has been debated. He tells his father he will take responsibility, but in what way? Did he go down there to murder the bunker couple or did he go there to offer the rock as a peace offering? His actor Choi Woo-shik asked Bong if it was the former, to which Bong replied, "No, maybe it was a gift. Maybe he wanted to say sorry." Woo-shik himself also believes Ki-woo would not kill. However, the interpretation that Ki-woo attempted murder on Moon-gwang and Geun-se at the end is prevalent even on this very wiki.
  • Since the movie has no main antagonist, it's hotly debated among audiences whether both the Parks and the Kims deserved their own plight at the end.
• Anvilicious: As per usual, Bong Joon-ho isn't exactly subtle about his Capitalism Is Bad themes, though the film is more nuanced than the many uses of this theme, including Bong's Snowpiercer.
• Applicability: Despite being set in South Korea and dealing with exclusively South Korean issues, the movie found lots of resonance with people around the world when it comes to class conflict and the fact that it deals with capitalism which is experienced worldwide.
• Award Snub: The film and crew racked up a hefty number of nominations and wins, up to and including wins at the 2020 Oscars. However...
  • While it made history as the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture, it also accomplished the rare, dubious feat of winning Best Picture without any nominations in the acting categories, becoming just the 12th film to do so (and just the fifth in the last 60 years, after The Last Emperor, Braveheart, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Slumdog Millionaire). This was especially glaring for Parasite, which has been widely praised for having a number of strong acting performances. Song Kang-ho, as an industry vet and frequent presence in Bong Joon-ho's acclaimed films, plus having received some awards from film critic groups in the lead-up to Oscar season, probably had the best chance at a nomination, but didn't get the nod. Some observers felt the film's Ensemble Cast may have worked against it, making it difficult to single out individual performances for awards. Others thought Neon, the film's US distributor, didn't push hard enough for acting nominations in their campaigning.
  • Some also feel Yang Jin-mo should have won Best Editing, as the sleek editing contributes majorly to the smooth flow of the film as a whole. The montage showing how the Kims got the housekeeper fired was particularly cited as one of the most well-edited sequences of the past few years. The award ended up going to Ford v Ferrari.
  • While it won five Grand Bell Awards (South Korean equivalent of Academy Awards) including Best Picture and Best Director, but it didn't take home with Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Editing, something that garnered enough acclaim to get even Oscar nods for the latter two.
• Awesome Music: While the whole soundtrack (composed by Jung Jae-il) is good, "The Belt of Faith" deserves special mention: Many viewers thought it was an actual piece of Classical Music and were surprised to discover it was specifically made for the movie.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Yes, the Kims are (Anti-)Villain Protagonists. Their criminal acts pile up as the events of the movie unfold. So do those of Moon-gwang and her husband. But the Kims are so destitute that folding pizza boxes initially becomes their only source of income (and they sometimes starve nonetheless due to how absurd the standards for box-folding are), and resort to letting themselves be suffocated by fumigation gas because they can't afford pest control. As for Moon-gwang and her husband, he's been stuck in an underground bunker for four years, losing his sanity and making an unhealthy shrine to Mr. Park as he goes mad. The affluenza and unintentional classism the Parks display — ranging from trash-talking Ki-taek for smelling like a peasant and unintentionally bragging about their wealth to the recently homeless Kims — culminates in Ki-taek snapping and stabbing Mr. Park in a rage when Mr. Park reflexively recoils from his smell.
  • Alternatively, if you find the Kims unsympathetic thanks to how they get two innocent people fired to replace them, manipulate their employers without batting an eyelid, repeatedly exploit a woman's deathly allergy, deceive and seduce an underage student, and threaten to call the police on and then (unintentionally) murder Moon-gwang who has been sheltering her husband in the basement of the house, watching their plans all crumble around them towards the end can be quite satisfying.
• Confirmation Bias: Some who were less impressed by the film have accused the people heaping praise on it of this, suggesting that they care less about the movie's actual merits and more about the fact that it agrees with their socio-political beliefs.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The culmination of the garden party scene is genuinely shocking and gut-wrenching, but when it's followed by the shot of one of the Parks' dogs eating sausages off the skewer with Geun-sae's body still impaled on it, it's darkly hilarious.
• Cry for the Devil: After all the actions that they've done, it may be hard for some watchers to actually sympathize with the Kim family during the second half of the movie. But Ki-jeong's death at the hands of Moon-gwang's husband, and the ensuing grief from losing her essentially drives the rest of the Kim family to abandon their previous ways and to make an honest living.
• Death of the Author: There is a solid argument to be made that this movie is a Deconstructive Parody of Korean Drama series. (That being said, the class warfare tends to be the recurring theme in that genre as well.)
  YouTube comment: So....am i the only person who read this movie as a parody/subversion of K-dramas (Korean soap operas)? Like, the vast vast majority of k-dramas are about class differences but usually peddle a fantasy about the elite — that they're powerful, smart, and ultimately good at heart. A young woman (and sometimes a young man) will meet a rich and handsome person who will reveal their heart of gold by lifting them out of poverty. Parasite shows a more realistic scenario (in some ways) of how the wealthy and poor actually interact. I'd say it also specifically takes a lot of the visual styling from k-dramas ESPECIALLY in how the son is filmed at the end of the movie when he fantasizes about buying the house. Plus, the plot of the movie (a housekeeper whose family is secretly living in their client's basement) is the same as the drama Stars falling from the skies. The actress who plays the sister is also a pretty well-known k-drama actress (I'm not sure how big the Korean film industry is and how much cross-pollination there is, that could just be a coincidence).
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Yeon-kyo is constantly worried that there is something wrong with her son. No diagnosis is given but it is played for drama and very relevant. Given The Reveal, it's probably PTSD.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Some critics say this movie is about a heroic poor family giving a bunch of evil rich pricks their just desserts. The movie itself actually takes a fairly neutral view on the conflict.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • In a film already full of fantastic performances, Park So-dam as the cool, competent Ki-jeong has been particularly well-received, complete with her "Jessica Jingle" ("Jessica, only child, Illinois, Chicago...") reaching borderline meme status.
  • Bong's English interpreter for the full promotion cycle, Sharon Choi, became the real-life example as well.^note Bong does speak English, although he tends to use Korean in foreign interviews.
  • Park Yeon-kyo, the ditzy matriarch of the Park family, is important in the story mainly as the Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense enabler for the Kim family. But many viewers have cited Cho Yeo-jeong's portrayal of her as a highlight of the film, giving Mrs. Park some charm as well as effectively playing her cluelessness for laughs, while also giving hints of a darker side to her personality.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With, of all movies, Joker! It helps that both films struggle with themes of morally gray characters and a subtle critique of Eat the Rich, alongside both being Sleeper Hits due to word-of-mouth. Even with Parasite winning the Oscar for Best Picture, the Joker fanbase nevertheless congratulated Bong Joon-ho, especially considering a foreign movie succeeded at such a caliber.
  • It's very common to come across people who also liked Shoplifters for sharing the similar premise with this movie. It goes even further with the director of Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, later went to work with the same cast (Song Kang-ho), crew members (cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo and composter Jung Jae-il), and distributor Neon to make Broker.
• Funny Moments:
  • When the Kim family try to get Moon-gwang fired from the Parks, they claim that she has tuberculosis rather than the peach allergy she has, and use hot sauce to fake her blood. Ki-taek's Dull Surprise look as he dramatically shows Yeon-kyo the "blood"-soaked napkin is especially icing on the cake.
  • While gloating about their "victory" over the Kims, Moon-gwang delivers a spot-on impersonation of the famously hammy North Korean news anchor Ri Chun-hee to her husband.
  • As soon as Geun-sae escapes the basement and begins his rampage, Da-song takes one look at the "ghost" who's apparently come back to haunt him and faints dead away in a moment of pure Black Comedy.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The infamous "Jessica Jingle" is based on "독도는 우리땅" ("Dokdo Is Our Land"), a famous national Korean song about a land dispute with Japan. The song's melody is so well known around Korea that it's used by school children to memorize information, much like Ki-jeong does here.
  • That steak that is cooked in with Da-song's instant noodles? That's Hanwoo, a very expensive form of beef that is only found in Korea. It's the Korean equivalent to Japan's Kobe beef, a fitting ingredient to be found in the Park family mansion. The noodle dish itself is a cheap mix of jjapaguri, a mix of Chapagetti (spicy black bean sauce) and Neoguri (seafood broth) brand noodles that is a common dish in Korea for the poor and young. In a non-Korean context, it's along the lines of putting Black Truffles onto a Big Mac, or Cheez Whiz onto a filet mignon.
  • Moon-gwang's impersonation of North Korean news anchor Ri Chun-hee, for those outside of Korea.
  • The song playing in the background when Moon-gwang and her husband are holding the Kims at the living room is "In ginocchio da te" by Gianni Morandi. In the 1960s, Morandi was a star in Italian "musicarello" movies; it was usually a comedy genre, focused on the differences between poor and rich classes.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • It was already beloved in its home country, but it became an instant Sacred Cow with France's Cannes Film Festival awarding the movie their top prize, as well as the Academy Awards giving it their Best Picture award, making it the first Best Picture Oscar winner in a non-English language in history.
  • Even Bong commented about this as well. In the interview, he admitted that he made this movie with an exclusively South Korean point-of-view, but people around the world ended up loving it, and said that "we all live in the same country, called capitalism."
  • People in downstate Illinois have responded positively to the film because of the out-of-nowhere reference to Illinois State University as the supposed alma mater of "Jessica".
• Harsher in Hindsight: Mr. Park potentially enabling his wife's drug addiction became a bitter pill to swallow when his actor, Lee Sun-kyun, was accused of abusing drugs himself in late 2023, and eventually killed himself in the middle of an investigation.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This movie won the Palme d'Or almost a year after Hirokazu Kore-eda, who's a good acquaintance with Bong and from the neighboring country of Japan, won the same award for Shoplifters, which shares the same premise of a family of petty criminals trying to survive in poverty. This led many critics and journalists to consider Parasite as a Spiritual Successor/Antithesis of Kore-eda's film.
    • It goes even further: Kore-eda worked with Song Kang-ho, Parasite cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, and Parasite composer Jung Jae-il to make his first Korean-language movie Broker. His follow-up to that movie, Monster, shares a similar title with Bong's The Host (2006) (Gwoemul - which means "monster" in Korean).
  • This overlaps with Heartwarming in Hindsight. Bong Joon-ho once went on record dismissing the Oscars for being “very local”, meaning they typically only award American movies and forget foreign ones, especially those made by people of color. While many have agreed with his criticism toward the Oscars' (and the American film industry's) Anglocentrism, none of them expected him to eventually win some of the biggest awards of the ceremony (Best Director and Best Picture). Bong referenced this during his acceptance speeches, saying he wanted to have a big drink after winning Best International Film (the only award that Parasite was considered a lock on), and then as he won Best Director, joking about how he did not expect to be up on the stage again and that he will drink "until next morning". You can see the overwhelming joy on his face each time his film won huge come Oscar night.
  • Related to the above, Parasite was meant to be Bong Joon-ho's return to small-scale Korean filmmaking after two failed attempts to break onto the big-budget international filmmaking scene with Snowpiercer (an Acclaimed Flop outside of Korea) and Okja (a Netflix exclusive that was acclaimed, but mostly went unnoticed in the awards circuit). Against all odds, it was Parasite that instead became the breakout international hit, earning $266 million and winning big at the awards circuit, catapulting Bong into the comparative mainstream^*though Snowpiercer had also developed enough of a cult following to inspire an American television remake on TNT.
  • Park So-dam^note last-name-first naming convention plays Kim Ki-Jeong, who cons a family named Park!
  • Jang Hye-jin (Chung-sook) and Park Myung-hoon (Geun-se) play antagonistic, struggling poor South Koreans in this film; later in the same year of the film's release, they would play bickering but loving siblings and members of North Korean high society in the internationally popular drama Crash Landing on You.
• Hype Backlash: Perhaps unsurprising, given just how much constant praise and success has been heaped on the movie. A growing number of people have left the film wondering what all the fuss is about, or even accusing the people who praise the film of only doing so because it flatters their socio-political views.
• Jerkass Woobie: Moon-gwang and her husband. Upon realizing that they have been tricked out by the Kim family through some very unsavory acts, they are truly justified to be truly angered for what they've done and decide to blackmail the Kims for tricking them out.
• Malignant Plot Tumor: Early in the movie, the fact that the Kim family all shares the same smell due to their living conditions is treated as a footnote. Overhearing a conversation between the Parks about his smell causes Ki-taek to become increasingly conscious of their reactions to his smell, largely forgetting other issues like the couple in the bunker. It eventually reaches the point that Ki-taek murders Mr. Park over a Stink Snub in the middle of the climactic scene with Guen-se.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Bong d'Or ^note Coined by film critic Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times, it's a portmanteau of Bong's name and the Palme d'Or.
  • "Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films."^note From Bong's acceptance speech (translated by his interpreter Sharon Choi) for receiving the Golden Globe for Best International Film. Many internet denizens interpreted this as a Take That! to the American public's disdain for subtitled international movies. Oddly enough, it became a popular thing to quote since Americans tend to cringe at Hollywood remakes of non-American movies. Likewise, it has been used by anime fans to justify their stance on the Subbing vs. Dubbing debate.
  • Check Your Basement ^note Based on its infamous twist where a housekeeper's poor husband lived in the Park family's house bunker for years, people use this as a response to rich people tweeting about their First-World Problems or sharing photographs of their expensive homes and flaunting their wealth. It is used in a similar context as "Check your privilege."
  • Ki-taek driving ^note Reaction image macro based on a scene where Yeon Kyo discusses the “nice” rain on the phone as Ki-Taek, who just lost his home from the flood, drives her. Online, people use the image of Ki-Taek driving her to express feelings of class resentment.
  • The image of Bong Joon-ho making two of his Oscars kiss each other.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • During the thunderstorm, the Kims' home floods with sewage water. Ki-taek, Ki-woo, and Ki-jeong wade through filthy water to salvage a handful of possessions.
  • During the flood, Ki-jeong enters the semi-basement's flooded bathroom, where the toilet is spewing black sewage. She sits on the toilet cover and smokes a cigarette in a futile effort to prevent more sewage from spewing into the room.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Geun-sae hitting Ki-woo on the head with Ki-woo's stone, then later stabbing Ki-jeong in the middle of Da-song's birthday party, causing it to erupt in chaos.
  • Da-song seeing Geun-sae ascend from the basement wearing that terrifying wide-eyed expression. No wonder the poor kid was traumatized.
• Paranoia Fuel: The idea of someone secretly living inside your home through a room that you don’t know about.
• Parody Displacement: In much of the west, the film is much more well-known than any of the K-dramas that it acts as a Black Comedy Deconstructive Parody of.
• Ron the Death Eater: Some critics claim the movie is about an innocent rich family being manipulated and abused by evil poor jerks who use their poverty as an excuse to mistreat others. The movie itself actually takes a fairly neutral view on the conflict.
• Squick:
  • The Parks have sex while in full view of their son's tepee in the yard, only a few dozen feet away. Dong-ik convinces his wife to go along with it by saying that they can just remove their hands if their son reappears.
  • Da-hye, a girl of 15-16, is lusted after by two men in their twenties who serve as her tutors, both angling to ask her out once she attends university. Ki-woo starts a relationship with her early, all the while reading her diary and lying to her.
• Tear Jerker:
  • During a period of torrential rain, the Kim family sans Chung-sook return to their home only to find it almost completely submerged in water. Geun-sae and Moon-gwang aren't better off either, as Moon-gwang is seriously wounded by Choong-sook and Geun-sae is trying to alert the Parks about the situation below via hitting the light switch for the manor, to no avail.
  • The death of Moon-gwang, with her powerless husband Forced to Watch while he can't help her.
  • The death of Ki-jeong. Her devastated parents are not able to save her, especially intensified when her father says that he can't think about her without crying.
  • The ending. Ki-woo realizes his father is alive and sending Morse code signals from the former Park mansion, but must stay there for arguably the rest of his life. Ki-woo sends his father a letter, stating he will one day finally have enough money from a good education to buy the house and free him from that prison. We then see a Hope Spot with Ki-woo and Chung-sook looking over the newly-bought property and reuniting with Ki-taek after he leaves the bunker, after which the film fades out...only to fade back into their small basement home, all but outright stating that this image is a simple Tragic Dream of Ki-woo. It's also been sadly confirmed by Bong Joon-ho that despite Ki-woo's good graces, there is realistically no way he would be able to acquire the house.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Park Da-hye is shockingly underdeveloped compared to the rest of her family. She could have shown another side of the spoiled upper-class family the Park family represents like "first-world teenage problems" that would puzzle someone like the Kim family. Instead, she starts a relationship of Questionable Consent with Ki-woo, and everything she does in the movie is because of her attraction to Ki-woo.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • While Word of God is that there are no villains in this work, many viewers demonize Mr. and Mrs. Park to the point of citing Mr. Park's murder as something to be celebrated.
  • By the same token, for many viewers the final attempts to earn sympathy for the Kims and Moon-gwang and Geun-se don't work as well as might have been intended, since ultimately they get everything that was coming to them, with three of them being outright murderers.
• Values Dissonance: On a minor level, the extravagance and spaciousness of the Parks home is better understood in South Korea and other Asian countries where the standard of living space is much tighter and incomes are much lower. In the United States it would make for a very impressive apartment but may come across more like a well-kept townhome.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Capitalism Is Bad and economic inequality are major themes of the film, but they're not the only themes. A lot of the Hype Backlash has been because some people go into it expecting it to be a didactic political commentary. While it does have quite a bit to say on capitalism and class conflict, it's also a Black Comedy/Thriller Genre Mashup and can be enjoyed purely on that level, with the capitalism critique just the context for the genre story at hand.
• The Woobie: Da-song can be one with Geun-sae traumatizing him and putting him in a bad seizure on his birthday, twice, with his doting father and maybe himself dying on the second one.
• Woolseyism: Some of the jokes and references are changed in the English subtitles.
  • The underground home the Kims are living is called "반지하" (Banjiha) in Korean, which literally means "semi-underground". This is translated in English subtitles as "semi-basement". The same happens in the Japanese translation, and in fact, the Japanese subtitle of the film is named Hanchika no Kazoku ("Semi-basement-dwelling family").
  • KakaoTalk, a messaging app that's predominantly used in South Korea, is translated as the more internationally recognized WhatsApp.
  • After Ki-jeong forged a Yonsei University certificate for her brother, Ki-taek asks if Seoul National University, a prestigious university in South Korea, has a major in document forgery. This is translated as "Does Oxford have a major in document forgery?".
  • In original Korean, the pastry that Geun-sae sold at his bankrupted shop was a Taiwanese-style Castella, a cake that originated in Portugal that's popular in Japan. In the English subtitles, this is translated as "Taiwanese cake".
  • Jjapaguri (짜파구리), a Korean comfort food that combines two instant noodle packages (Jjpaghetti + Neoguri) into one stoner-inspired meal served with a strip of sirloin, is translated "ram-don", a portmanteau of ramen and udon.

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