Parasites

Here’s the basic shtick of the movie:

A poor, underclass (in income and in attitude) Korean family insert themselves, one by one, into the lives of a rich Korean family.

The son of this underclass family first gains entry as a tutor for the rich family’s young daughter. Her regular tutor is going off to university or something and recommends his friend from the underclass family. They have a light romantic flirtation but the movie (stumbling again) goes nowhere with it.

It’s only be degrees that we learn that this underclass Korean family are practiced scam artists who all seem to have done this type of thing before. The son recommends her sister to be the art teacher for the rich woman’s pampered young boy. This sister, in particular, is good at playing the kind of pretentious nitwit liberal who indeed would ask people to pay high fees for “art therapy.”

And there are some small, ongoing laughs with all this. No belly laughs but it’s amusing in small ways. Then the daughter (the fake art therapist) undermines the chauffeur. He is fired and then the son (the tutor of the rich kid’s daughter) recommends his father as the chauffeur.

The rich Korean family, of course, has no idea that these underclass people are all related. Next, all three of them work together to undermine the longtime housekeeper. She is dismissed and one of them recommends their mother as the new housekeeper.

So this is, I guess, the “parasite” aspect of this. And as improbably as this all is, it can be forgiven because of the whacky, oddball type of black humor it so obviously aims to be. And this is all before the bizarre bloodbath at the end which dismisses the entire first part of the movie and thus taints the film with inherent cinematic dishonesty.

Then (and this is when it starts to fall apart, although this plays well for a while) they find that there is a man who has been living for years underneath the rich family’s house in some old bunkers that were built. We are told that this is a common feature for the very expensive homes.

He is the husband of the former long-time housekeeper. In the basement there is a secret door to the bunkers that the present rich family doesn’t know about. The old housekeeper had snuck her husband food, etc., and the husband is quite happy with living in the bunker which has at least rudimentary amenities. But supplies had been cut off for a while when his wife (the old housekeeper) was dismissed.

After that, the rest is not worth describing. But up until this point, the movie is interesting enough.