I finally got around to watching this movie and I can see why it was so popular, not only with the Oscars but with audiences as well. It tells the tale of a poor family so well, especially when it’s jeux position against the rich, and how who we begin the movie assuming the parasite is actually turns out to be the complete opposite.

A family live in a basement together and are incredibly poor, there is the mother, father, daughter and son. One evening the son sees a friend who is going to university and tells him about a job opportunity to tutor a rich girl in a more prominent area. The boy of course jumps at the chance to make money and soon finds ways to get the rest of his family members to do other jobs in the house and take over other jobs from previous service men and women. Including the daughter becoming an art therapist for the rich family’s son, as well as the poor father becoming the new driver and the mother becoming the new housekeeper. This is where things take a turn however when the housekeeper that the mother replaced returns one night when the rich family are not home.

We soon learn that the old housekeeper has her husband hidden away behind a secret door in the basement, what would be used as a bunker in case of a nuclear attack. Of course the family is unhappy about this because their jobs are at stake and soon the housekeeper realises the scam they are playing on the rich family too and tries to expose them. This brings in different elements of the story of who’s really scamming who, you can see that of course the poor family want to be able to have a better life for themselves and get out of the situation they’re in, but also the rich family do not care about these people. They often talk about the smell of them and how it’s disgusting and how when rain happens that floods the poor family’s basement, the rich family relish in it because it makes their garden so much greener. It really shows the difference between the two classes and really puts doubt in the audiences’ mind of who the parasite is and who is the one that the parasite is feeding off of.

I especially liked in the end when the rich family leave the house that they were living in and the poor dad having murdered someone uses that house as a place to hide himself away from being jailed. The son of the poor family decides that he will one day earn enough money to be able to buy that house and grant his father freedom, however we see that to be able to do exactly what he wants he has to become the person that he ended up despising by the end of the film. He felt beneath the rich which caused him anger, yet he wants to become one of them to be able to help his family. It goes to show the complex mind games you have to go through in that you have to become the thing you despise to finally have the happiness you think you deserve in life, and it’s also interesting how the father is using the house as a place to hide from the police to stop being imprisoned, but has ultimately imprisoned himself anyway regardless of the situation.

It’s a really fascinating story about class differences and how much life can be different for people in certain circumstances. To call back again to the rain symbolism of flooding the poor family’s house while giving the rich family excitement for greener grass, it goes to show that while everyone is living on the same planet and dealing with the same issues, one issue to one person might be minimal but is life-changing to another, and it’s unfortunate that it seems the only way to be able to escape your situation in life is to become the opposite and become something that you either idolise or resent entirely.

I highly recommend this film because it has so much fantastic social commentary on the world that we live today and it really opens your eyes to see that what you may see as a problem in your life wouldn’t even be a problem in someone else’s life, because the problems that you don’t see as problems can completely encompass the whole being of someone else. It really makes you want to be grateful for the life that you have and to always strive to make the people around you and their lives better and less exhausting.

What do you think of Parasite?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding