Parasite: An Honest Review of Bong Joon-ho's Masterpiece
By Huzi
File #565 · 3 min read
Parasite gets three viewings from me, and each one is a different film. The first time you watch the plot, the second time the craft, the third time the people.
The quick answer: A genuine masterpiece with three real flaws — in February 2020 it took four Oscars including Best Picture, the first non-English-language film ever to win it, and it earned every statue on construction alone. Watch it twice, a week apart, and you will see why.
Viewing one: the plot, and the turn
For roughly forty minutes it is a con-man comedy: the destitute Kim family infiltrating the wealthy Park household one job at a time, and you are laughing. Then the former housekeeper returns in the rain, a basement door opens, and the film becomes a thriller, then a tragedy, then something close to horror.
Most directors cannot survive one genre change. Bong Joon-ho survives three, and you never see the joins — he plants the dread early, in a smell, in a flicker of the lights, in the way the Parks never quite look down.
Viewing two: the craft
The Park house was never a real house: built on a soundstage, every wall filmable, every window calibrated to the hour of the story. That is why it feels beautiful and slightly wrong — a character rather than a set.
The Kims' semi-basement was built on a tilted floor, so the camera always looks slightly down into it — the way the city does. The ram-don scene, two instant noodle packs upgraded with steak and quail eggs because the Parks are coming home early, is tension and class comedy in one breath.
And the rainstorm, flooding the Kims' streets while the Parks sleep dry on a hilltop, remains the sharpest image of its decade: water does not care about your politics, but it absolutely cares about your postcode.
Viewing three: the flaws, honestly
| The flaw | The honest take |
|---|---|
| The Parks are too naive to fully believe | Real wealth has assistants and instincts — their obliviousness is Bong choosing thesis over psychology |
| The smell metaphor | Brilliant on first use, then hammered until it becomes text, then slogan |
| The ending | Divides people honestly — poignant to me, a flinch to readers I respect |
A masterpiece with three real flaws is still a masterpiece. Pretending otherwise does the film no favours.
The context that makes it land
- The banjiha semi-basement: a real address Koreans read like a surname.
- The 1997 IMF crisis: the ghost inside the basement man's failed cake shop.
- "Spec" culture: the brilliant Kim children have no slot in the system. That is not backstory — that is the present.
Pro tip: Rewatch the first twenty minutes after one full viewing — every "lucky" break the Kims engineer is planted in plain sight, and catching them is half the joy.
If all this makes you want to walk the real thing — the staircase streets of Ahyeon-dong, the Mapo-gu alleys, the corner that floods — HTG Travels builds Seoul itineraries with the same care I take films apart: visa, flights, and a route that respects your legs.
Gaza is where Bong's lesson stops being metaphor: a people fenced into deprivation and then blamed for it.
Text your dates to +92 317 5054959 and ask for the Parasite route — HTG Travels does fan trips that do not feel like package tours.
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