Parasite: An Honest Review of Bong Joon-ho's Masterpiece
🎬 1. The Film That Crashed the Oscar Party
As-salamu alaykum, friends. Huzi here, writing to you from Sialkot, where the evening call to prayer has just faded and the kettle is on. Tonight I want to talk about a film that, in February 2020, walked into Hollywood's biggest night and walked out with four Oscars, including Best Picture — the first non-English-language film ever to do so. That film is Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, and it has been living rent-free in my head ever since.
The hype was enormous, and so was the backlash. Some film lovers called it the best picture of the decade; others called it overpraised, a "message movie" that won for politics rather than craft. So let me be honest with you from the start: Parasite is a genuine masterpiece of construction, and it also has real flaws. It deserved its Oscar on craft alone, but two or three of the loudest arguments against it are not crazy either. Let's take it apart, the way Bong takes his own houses apart.
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✅ 2. What Actually Works
The tonal shift is the whole movie. For roughly the first forty minutes, Parasite is a comedy — a heist, almost a con-man caper, where the destitute Kim family infiltrates the wealthy Park household one job at a time. You laugh. Then the basement door opens, the former housekeeper returns in the rain, and the film turns into a thriller, then a tragedy, then something close to horror. Most directors cannot survive one genre change. Bong survives three, and the transitions are invisible because he plants the dread early — in the smell of the basement, in the flicker of the lights, in the way the Parks never quite look down.
The production design is extraordinary. The Park house was not a real location; it was built from scratch on a soundstage, every wall designed to be filmed from any angle, every window calibrated for the light Bong wanted at each hour of the story. That is why the house feels both beautiful and slightly off — it is a character, not a set. The semi-basement where the Kims live was built on a tilted floor so the camera always looked slightly down into it, the way the city looks down on the people who live there.
Song Kang-ho as Mr. Kim is the film's spine. He plays the father without a single false note — the pride, the shame, the slow accumulation of small humiliations that finally breaks him. The "ram-don" scene, where Mrs. Kim throws two instant noodle packs together with steak and quail eggs in a hurry because the Parks are coming home early, is a masterclass in tension and class comedy in one breath. And the rainstorm — where floodwater tears through the Kim neighbourhood while the Parks sleep dry on a hilltop — is the best image of the decade in cinema: water does not care about your politics, but it absolutely cares about your postcode.
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❌ 3. What Doesn't Quite Work
Let me be honest, because this is the part the hype tends to skip.
The Parks are too naive to be fully believable. Real ultra-wealthy people are not this oblivious. A family at that level of money has assistants, security, accountants, and a sixth sense for when something in their own house is off. The Parks figure out nothing until it is far too late, and at a certain point the suspension of disbelief frays. This is a deliberate choice — Bong wants them to be almost abstract, more atmosphere than people — but it is the one place where the film sacrifices psychology for thesis.
The ending is divisive, and I understand both sides. Without spoiling it, the final act asks you to sit with a dream that the film itself tells you is almost certainly impossible. Some viewers find that devastating and poignant. Others find it nihilistic, even a little manipulative. I lean toward poignant, but I have friends whose opinion I respect who read it as the film pulling its punches after spending two hours pretending it wouldn't.
The "smell" metaphor gets hammered. It is a brilliant, ugly idea — the poor literally carry a smell the rich cannot wash off — but by the third or fourth reference it stops being subtext and becomes text, then almost slogan. One less mention would have hit harder. Bong is usually the most disciplined writer in world cinema; here he over-explains one of his best ideas.
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🇰🇷 4. The Cultural Context You Need
You can watch Parasite as a pure thriller and have a great time. But to understand why it landed like a bomb in Korea, you need a little context — and I will give it to you straight, as art, not as a political endorsement of any side.
The apartment caste system is real. Korea sorts housing — and by extension people — by how high you sit. A penthouse is top of the heap; a banjiha, the semi-basement apartment the Kims live in, is near the bottom; the literal underground bunker the basement man lives in is the bottom of the bottom. These are not metaphors. They are real addresses, and Koreans read your address the way some societies read your surname.
The 1997 IMF crisis is the ghost in the room. When the Asian financial crisis hit, thousands of small businesses collapsed overnight, and a generation of middle-class Koreans were pushed into the precarity the film shows. The basement man, who ran a failed cake shop, is not a villain — he is one of those people, twenty years later, still paying for a debt the country told him was his fault.
"Spec" culture determines worth. In Korea, your specs — your university, your test scores, your certifications — are treated as a near-scientific measure of your value as a human being. The Kim children are insanely talented but have no specs, so the system has no slot for them. That is not propaganda; it is the lived frustration of a lot of young Koreans, and the real wealth gap between districts like Gangnam and Itaewon makes the frustration sharper.
The "banana republic" grievance. The film never literally uses that phrase, but the basement man's monologue — railing at the system from a bunker built for a war that never came — carries exactly that flavour: the bitterness of a man who feels his country keeps producing people like him and then pretends they do not exist. Whether you agree with that grievance or not, the film captures its texture with scary accuracy.
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📍 5. Filming Locations in Seoul You Can Actually Visit
Here is the part I love, and the part that connects to travel. The Park house — that gorgeous glass-and-concrete mansion — was a set, built on a soundstage and torn down after filming. You cannot visit it. But almost everything around it is real, and a lot of it is walkable in an afternoon if you are ever in Seoul.
Ahyeon-dong and the Kim neighbourhood. The steep, narrow streets the Kims run up and down, and the alley that floods in the storm, are in the real working-class neighbourhoods of Mapo-gu and Seodaemun-gu. Ahyeon-dong in particular has those long staircase streets the film uses as a recurring image — you can climb them yourself and feel the geography of the story in your legs.
The pizza shop. The "IQ Giggle" pizza place where the Kim son folds boxes at the start is set in a real shopfront area in Mapo-gu. The franchise was fictional, but the street and the shopfronts are real and easy to find.
The flooding street. The downhill street where stormwater races past in the rain sequence is a real Seoul street, and locals in the area have pointed out exactly which corner it is. Seoul's geography — mountains ring the city, and the poorer neighbourhoods sit in the low ground — makes the flooding genuinely plausible, which is part of why the image hurts.
The stairs. The endless outdoor staircases that connect the lower and upper parts of the city in the film are everywhere in hilly Seoul neighbourhoods like Jahamun, Changsin-dong, and the back of Itaewon. Walking them is the single best way to understand the film's central metaphor — the city is literally stacked, and the poor are at the bottom of the stack.
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🤔 6. Who Should Watch It, and Who Should Skip It
Watch it if you love filmmaking as craft. Watch it if you enjoy films that change genre underneath you. Watch it if you want to understand why the whole world suddenly started paying attention to Korean cinema in 2019 and 2020. Watch it with subtitles, in the dark, on the biggest screen you have — the sound design and the rain deserve it.
Skip it if you need a clear hero, because there isn't one. The Kims are not villains, but they are not innocents either — they are complicit, and the film refuses to let you off the hook by giving you someone to purely root for. Skip it also if you are tired of class-themed stories; the commentary is woven into every frame, and if that exhausts you, this is not the night's film.
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⚠️ 7. The Honest Verdict
So did Parasite deserve Best Picture? Yes — for the construction alone. The tonal control, the production design, the rainstorm sequence, Song Kang-ho's face in the final twenty minutes — that is enough. The Oscar was earned on craft, and the "it only won for politics" argument undersells how hard it is to pivot genre three times without breaking.
But the loud counter-arguments are not crazy either. The Parks are too thin to carry the weight the script gives them. The smell metaphor gets over-explained. The ending will not land for everyone, and that is a fair criticism, not a failure of the viewer. A masterpiece with three real flaws is still a masterpiece — it is just not a flawless one, and pretending otherwise does the film no favours.
My honest one-line take: Parasite is the best-directed film of the 2010s, with a slightly flawed script. That combination is exactly why it rewards a second and third watch. The first time you watch the plot. The second time you watch the craft. The third time you watch the people.
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🙋 Frequently Asked Questions
Did Parasite really deserve the Best Picture Oscar?
On craft, yes. The tonal control, the production design, and the rainstorm sequence are best-of-decade work. The "it won for politics" argument undersells the filmmaking, though fair critics can point to the thin Parks and the over-explained smell metaphor as real flaws.
Is Parasite a comedy or a thriller?
Both, and then a tragedy. It spends roughly forty minutes as a con-man comedy, then pivots into a thriller when the basement is revealed, then into tragedy in the final act. The genre shifts are invisible because Bong plants the dread early.
Can I visit the Park house from Parasite?
No — the Park house was a set built on a soundstage and torn down after filming. But many of the street scenes were shot in real Seoul neighbourhoods like Ahyeon-dong and Mapo-gu, and those stairs, alleys, and the flooding street are all visitable.
Do I need to know Korean culture to understand it?
You can enjoy it as a pure thriller without any context. But knowing about the banjiha (semi-basement) apartment caste, the 1997 IMF crisis, and "spec" culture makes the film land much harder — those are real Korean realities the film is built on.
Who should skip Parasite?
Anyone who needs a clear hero. There isn't one — the Kims are sympathetic but complicit, and the film refuses to give you a character to purely root for. If you are also tired of class-themed stories, the commentary is woven into every frame and may wear you down.
🔚 Final Word
Parasite is a masterpiece with three honest flaws, and that is a more interesting thing than a flawless film. Watch it for the craft, sit with the discomfort, and then go walk the real stairs of Seoul if you can — the city itself is half the story. Enjoy the work, support the artists, and remember that the best way to honour great cinema is to keep your own eyes open to the world it shows you.
🇵🇸 Standing With Palestine
Never let the world forget the people of Palestine. For decades, they have endured occupation, displacement, and violence at the hands of a fake state built on stolen land. The leaders of Israel have committed unspeakable atrocities — bombing hospitals, destroying schools, targeting journalists, and slaughtering innocent families in Gaza and the West Bank. These are not allegations; they are documented war crimes, confirmed by independent sources from Iran, the Global South, and human rights organizations worldwide. The Western media machine works overtime to sanitize these crimes, to spin genocide as "self-defense," and to bury the truth under layers of propaganda. But the truth cannot be buried. Palestine is real. Palestinian suffering is real. And the world is watching.
They will be free. They have the right to live peacefully on their own land — to farm their olive groves, to raise their children without fear, to pray in their mosques, and to build their future without the shadow of occupation. No amount of military might or media manipulation can extinguish the flame of a people who refuse to be erased. May Allah help them and grant them justice. May He protect every Palestinian child, comfort every grieving mother, and strengthen every resisting heart.
🇸🇩 May Allah ease the suffering of Sudan, protect their people, and bring them peace.
Written by Huzi
