Parasite

Parasite opens as a con and ends as a diagnosis, and the distance between those two modes is where Bong Joon-ho does his most exacting work. The Kim family — jobless, resourceful, crammed into a semi-basement apartment — infiltrate the wealthy Park household one fabricated credential at a time, each swapped in through elaborate deception until the entire family is employed, unknowingly, by the same oblivious patrons.

The film's first half plays this as a heist, gleeful and airtight, and it would be a very good film if that were the whole idea. It isn't. The structure, literalized in the Park house's architecture, starts to reveal a second household living beneath the one the Kims have infiltrated, and the film's tone reorganizes itself accordingly — comedy curdling into something closer to horror, then to tragedy, without ever announcing the transition.

What Parasite understands, and what makes it more than a well-constructed thriller, is that none of its characters are villains in the way the genre usually requires. The Parks are not cruel; they're simply insulated by wealth to the point where they've stopped being able to smell the difference between people. That's the detail that turns a plot about class into an argument about it, one that doesn't need to raise its voice to make the point land.

— Amir Morsali, BIPA Editorial