Pitch Black Comedy Thriller On Netflix Is Disturbing, Urgent, And Hilarious

Lately I’ve been having a great time watching Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company on Max because it’s always a treat when thrillers are approached with comedic intent and actually stick the landing. Shameful to admit that I’d never seen Parasite, also billed as a comedy thriller, I figured it was high time I finally gave it a proper watch after seeing its near-perfect 99 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A Korean film with no English dubs available on Netflix, watching Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite is light work if you’re one to watch TV with subtitles anyway.

Language barrier aside, you need to watch this film if you like your humor pitch black, and rooting for some of the most despicable people in modern cinema.

Through its satire, Parasite is a scathing indictment of wealth disparity and socioeconomic hierarchies that will leave you with mixed feelings. The rich folk being silently and unknowingly taken advantage of are innocent victims to the machinations of a manipulative lower-middle class family. While our parasitic protagonists certainly come from a place of despair, you’ll still spend time thinking about how they could have done literally anything else to get out of their dire financial straits than what they do in this film.

Fake It Till You Make It

Parasite first introduces us to Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), a lower-middle class young man living with his sister Ki-jung (Park So-dam) and his parents, father Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) and mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin). Living in a basement apartment prone to flooding and vandalism, Ki-woo is approached by his friend Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon) to fill in for him as an English tutor for the wealthy Park family’s daughter, Da-hye (Jung Ji-so). Forging documents and lying about his university placement, Ki-woo, now calling himself Kevin, quickly charms Choi Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong), the naive and pleasant Park family matriarch.

Once Kevin feels like he has job security, he exploits the Park family’s kindness and manipulates his newfound trust. He recommends that his sister, now calling herself Jessica, get hired as an art therapist for the family’s young son Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun), and she quickly upsells her services as a means to prove her value. Manipulating both Choi Yeon-gyo and her husband Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) to unthinkable levels, Kevin and Jessica get the rest of the household staff fired so they can bring their parents in on the action.

Getting too comfortable with their new employment situation, the family infiltrates the household, taking advantage of every opportunity to exploit the Park family through their “work ethic” and personal recommendations. Spending a questionable amount of mental resources maintaining their cover stories, it’s only a matter of time before they get caught in the act.

The Protagonists Are The Antagonist

Parasite is a hard pill to swallow for two reasons. First, the Kim family is down on their luck and jumps at the first opportunity to improve their living situation, even if it’s unethical. They’re coming from an all-too-common place of desperation, and they don’t have any reasonable outs through their own network. Once Ki-woo is approached by Min-hyuk, he sees a chance and builds a plan.

Second, the Park family is kindness personified. They’re a hardworking household that doesn’t take their wealth for granted. They treat their staff well for the sole purpose of maintaining their home and giving their children the life they deserve. Given their busy lifestyle, they’re also incredibly naive and a little too trusting of the Kims, but it’s hard to blame them because the latter forged documents and committed fraud at a high level to win their trust.

As much as you want to root for the Kim family, they reveal their true colors and they’re terrible people. They see the Park family as something they can leech off of. In the real world, it’s easy to point the finger at the upper class for having everything handed to them and not sharing the wealth. The harsh reality, however, is that they’re just people who happen to be more fortunate than the ones they’re hiring. The Park family does nothing wrong but work hard and be successful, making them sympathetic, while the Kim family devotes so much time and energy to exploiting them when they could have used that energy to improve their own situation without causing harm.

This Is Still A Comedy

For as many dark turns as Parasite takes, it still plays as a comedy. Through the Kim family’s antics, we see their plan backfire tremendously, and they eventually have to deal with the consequences. They got greedy exploiting a magnanimous family, which makes them no better than the people they think are in the wrong simply because those people may have been dealt a better hand in life.

This power dynamic will make you rethink wealth disparity because it flips the script. The people we’re supposed to hate are kind, and the people we’re supposed to root for are terrible. It’s a reality check that feels unwelcome at first, but like a parasite, it quickly takes over the discourse upon finishing this film.

Parasite is streaming on Netflix.