Parasite directed by Bong Joon-ho. Image courtesy of CJ Entertainment.
Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, Parasite, is receiving universal acclaim. So, I guess that makes me an outlier - because I didn’t find it to be very good. I’ve been riding on the Bong Joon-ho ride for a while, and I always leave his films kind of wondering vaguely if I am missing something. Snowpiercer was pretty good with a novel concept executed well, but The Host was just… OK. And Okja… I can’t be the only one who watched that and thought, What’s with all the hype? I appreciate that these films are different and inventive and they dig into some complex social issues. But they’re no Old Boy.
His latest film, Parasite, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, telling a deeply relevant and darkly comic tale of a clan of bottom-scrapers that scam their way into the inner sanctum of a wealthy family of gullible dunderheads. Hijinks ensue. Tragedy follows. Sounds like all the trappings of a great piece of cinema.
I cannot pinpoint exactly why I couldn’t really get into this film, but it never hooked me. I didn’t find it all that illuminating. And let’s be honest, it drags, clocking in at around 2 1/2 hours. Bong Joon-ho’s films often depict the struggles of lower class characters, using mystical or sci-fi or horror elements to frame these ideas. Here he dispenses with the genre framing devices and just tells a fairly straightforward black comedy about a family of schemers (without spoiling it, he does introduce some Gothic horror elements toward the end of the film but it didn’t do much for me), sketching out the parasitic symbiosis between rich and poor in the process.
I couldn’t get into this film. And since everyone agrees it is like a masterpiece, that must mean something is wrong with my brain. It’s like The Handmaid’s Tale all over again.