Bong Joon-ho continues to push the boundaries of cinema, with every new production becoming an event all on its own. His career has consisted of a few films in which he has consistently challenged what we perceive narrative fiction to be, taking on various subjects through his own unflinching commitment to representing a different side of society. Each of his films is so different from the one before due to their different subject matter that all converge into harrowing but effective manifestos on the modern world, but all so distinctly his own, carrying their own unique meanings and views that allow for truly engaging experiences between the auteur and his audience. His most recent film is unquestionably his best to date – a daring and brilliant social odyssey, Parasite (Korean: 기생충 or Gisaengchung) is a film that has quite rightfully cemented Bong as one of contemporary cinema’s reigning masters and confirmed his legacy as one of the most daring and audacious filmmakers working today. This is a film that has certainly been met with a great deal of acclaim and adoration from critics, audiences and the industry alike, and it isn’t difficult to understand why – this is a powerful, subversive and brilliant piece of cinema that questions everything we know about society in a way that is never heavy-handed, but rather simple and effective in theme, but complex in scope, and done with Bong’s distinctive wit and understated tendency towards chaotic views of social issues. Intelligent and unconventionally endearing in equal measure, Parasite most definitely warrants the intense adoration its been receiving since its debut earlier this year – and if anything, it only deserves to be praised even more. It is the kind of film that history tends to remember, and it is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. Forgive the rabid love – this type of film doesn’t come around all that often, and whether its in its steadfast approach to some difficult themes, or its devil-may-care execution of those ideas, it flourishes into a masterpiece the likes of which absolutely no one is prepared for.

Looking at the director’s previous work, everything he makes tends to have some deeper social meaning – it appears that while he does employ a great deal of dark comedy and grotesque humour into his work, Bong’s style has always been one that is rooted within reality, trying to create some profoundly resonant commentary on the world we live in – whether in his smaller, more intimate social dramas like Barking Dogs Never Bite or Memories of a Murder, or his more audacious and daring projects that see him working on a grander scale, such as Okja, The Host or Snowpiercer, Bong has always been a director whose vision is anchored firmly within trying to convey a certain idea, whatever it may be, delivered in its own unique way, varying in intensity, but never wavering in brilliance. This is certainly very true with Parasite, which may be his most profoundly direct in the message it is trying to convey, as well as his most nihilistic and bleak – featuring all the qualities we’ve come to appreciate in the filmmaker, from his uncompromising vision to his firm control of the balance between broad humour and social terror, he’s certainly made his masterpiece in this film, a cold-hearted but wonderfully acidic dark comedy about class struggle and the lack of empathy that apparently exists universally within all societies, where desperate times tend to call for desperate measures, and the more dire the situation, the more extreme the situation, all packaged into one chaotically fascinating work of cinematic art that allows the director the chance to once again assert his visionary brilliance onto a story that would not have worked had it not hailed from a filmmaker who has never been one to turn down the chance to shock, even if it means submerging his audiences into one of the most harrowing social commentaries ever committed to film, and one that is surely never going to be forgotten or disregarded as anything other than artistic audacity in its purest and most intrepid form.

Explaining the plot of Parasite is a fool’s errand, because not only is it better to go in completely blind (which only makes the experience so much more enriching, as we don’t need to be burdened with expectations on where this truly deranged but astoundingly inventive film is taking us), it is so difficult to condense this film into a single coherent set of thoughts, rather being something that needs to be experienced. The brilliance of Bong’s work is that while the stories themselves are relatively simple, its how he executes them and imbues them with a healthy blend of nasty surprises and subversive turns, that makes them almost difficult to describe, and prevents anyone who ever being able to fully encompass the true spirit of the work without leaving out some element of the plot that is both essential and intangible. The film mainly focuses on the Kim family, led by unemployed patriarch Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), his wife, Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), and two children, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and Ki-jung (Park So-damn). They live in relative poverty, residing in a basement apartment often subjected to fumigation, flooding and rogue public urinators. The family work menial jobs that hardly pay all that much, and thus relying on the unintentional kindness of strangers to survive, and the occasional chance to make some money through part-time work, in the hopes of actually just surviving another day. When an opportunity to work for a wealthy family finds its way into Ki-woo’s path, the family sees it as a chance to drastically change their lives, and are willing to go to any lengths to improve their conditions. One by one, they infiltrate the home of the wealthy Park family, adopting different personas and finding employment as members of their staff. Over time, they start to acclimate to the life of their employers, who are entirely oblivious to the fact that their new staff members are not strangers to each other, but a family using them as a means to escape poverty, and in the process taking advantage of the life that the upper class takes for granted. However, it soon becomes clear that it isn’t only the Kim family that conceal the truth, and beneath the idyllic suburban mansion lie some very sinister secrets, the exposure of which can not only derail their plans but also cause pandemonium to the fragile social order that remains omnipotent but unspoken.

Parasite is an impressive film for so many reasons, one of them being that it openly defies categorization, becoming one of the most complex dark comedies of the decade, a deliriously twisted and perverted thriller that sees Bong mercilessly blending pitch-black humour with bleak horror conventions to create a film that has a brilliantly comical core, but also a sense of dread and foreboding that makes for truly uncomfortable viewing. This film doesn’t belong to a single genre, and its tonal shifts create something that cannot ever be pinpointed to one precise idea or set of conventions. Infused with equal dosages of dark comedy, invasion horror, family drama, social satire and psychological thriller, Parasite is the rare kind of film that borrows from multiple genres that manage to effectively assimilate each of its radically different ideas into the structure of a film that makes every moment count. Each scene is filled with undeniable suspense and a sense of disconcerting despair that is only worsened by the callous dark humour pulsating beneath it, turning it into an unsettling film that speaks about issues that many of us would rather ignore, mainly because not only are they difficult to conceptualize, they’re hopelessly uncomfortable. Bong makes brilliant use of his authorial power to create an atmosphere where the viewer is not only challenged but outwardly assaulted by the depiction of class struggle, forced into a position of submission as the director takes control of our senses and submerges us into a labyrinthine world of pure, unadulterated social horror.

Of all the themes that Bong looks at, perhaps the most interesting is how Parasite is essentially his version of a home-invasion thriller, and considering this is coming from a director who never abides by any direct cinematic standards, there’s some deeper commentary underlying it. The film asks the audience to question the uncomfortable situation in which our homes are invaded by strangers – but subverts it by creating the idea that the people who find their way into your home to wreak havoc didn’t enter through force, but are rather intruders that you voluntarily allow in, not being aware of their motives. The house at the core of the story becomes a character in its own right – filled with secrets and as active in the story as any of the individuals that find themselves it at some point, navigating the cryptic corridors as they try and make sense of a reality they’re starting to question. What this film draws upon is the tendency for us to earnestly believe that our home is our sanctuary, an escape from an unforgiving world where we are immune to the ruthless nature of reality. This is precisely what Bong is intending to address here – he incites severe discomfort by setting this harrowing dark comedy in the most sacred of places, which creates the sensation that there is something very sinister lurking just below the surface, a sense of dread that thrives on the darkly comedic terror this film is built on, where the safest and most reassuring of environments are repurposed in a way that incites only unhinged terror. Like many of the great suspense films set in one location or following a single narrative thread, Parasite sees the director making great use of his steadfast understanding of the human condition and exactly what it is that scares us the most to lead us (just like the characters whose perspective we follow) on an entirely unexpected journey, where every moment is fully unpredictable and more terrifying than the one before it. The audience never quite know where this film is heading, which is one of the reasons it makes such an imprint – in a cinematic landscape based around formulae and well-known structures, Parasite dares to be different.

Parasite is an opportunity for Bong to explore his social curiosities, exploring class warfare and cultural divides through his modus operandi of bleak but effective dark comedy that never spares the thrills. As a result of his almost misanthropic view (albeit one that doesn’t see Bong ever abandon his compassionate perspective, even if it is remarkably subdued here, often appearing in the most unexpected places, when we need a reminder that the world is bleak, but there is always some form of hope in a bad situation), it can be considered a domestic horror film – perhaps not traditional in the way that other mainstream horror films are, the director rather employs a sense of discomfort in how he portrays what is normally consoling, and turns it into something unbearable. It does make use of the idea of the uncanny, where something so familiar is shown in a way that elicits fear rather than solace, and while it may utilize suspense more than overt terror, there is a general looming frightening unpleasantness that lingers on. The film is executed with the exact same kind of intense brutality that is present in Bong’s other work, both visually and thematically, with the director’s blend of hubristic horror, nihilistic despair and twisted humour forming an eerie film that looks at the other side of a very familiar concept, and creates an inescapable sense of social desolation, where everything that is supposed to bring us relief and alleviation from a harsh world is used against us, where our worst fears come from within, and where we realize that sometimes even the most familiar of situations can harbour dark secrets.

Logically, Bong once again matches his audacious story with his extraordinary creativity as a visual stylist. Everything in Parasite is seemingly perfect and fits in with the overall themes and the execution of the story. Not only is a brilliantly-written film, but Bong also manages to capture each moment of his incredible script, finding the authenticity in even the most absurd situations. Whether in the excess of the rich family, or the paltry existence of the poor family (which doesn’t only create a fascinating narrative binary, but also a chance to represent the two environments in very different ways). Its all drawn together so intricately by Bong, who demonstrates why he is amongst the most visionary filmmakers today, with his delicate but firm control over a film like this, and all of its peripheral elements that only enrich the experience (the astounding score by Jeong Jae-il, the cinematography by Hong Kyung-pyo, and the production design by the team tasked with taking a rather modern home and turning it into a location for pure, unhinged terror). Add to this the performances of the cast that is kept relatively small (being composed of less then ten different actors), but with each member of the ensemble being excellent – veteran actor Song Kang-ho is obviously the highlight in his fourth collaboration with Bong, taking on his most mysteriously sympathetic character to date, as well as Cho Yeo-jeong as the ditzy matriarch of the wealthy Park family, who finds herself hopelessly under-equipped to handle the reality of life brought when the Kim family takes over her life without her even realizing it at first. Everything about this film is so flawlessly thought-out, with Bong demonstrating a meticulous attention to detail, which all converges into the daring and intelligent satire that Parasite does so well.

We can discuss how audacious of a film Parasite is and how it navigates a set of complex themes in its endeavour to be as daring and subversive as possible, but it’s very clear that the most important concept underlying the film is that of family – this is the most unconventional film ever made on the subject of familial bonding since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Bong was clearly trying to convey the fact that beneath the deception and dark humour that is most predominant in this film, he’s really mostly interested in the unbreakable bond between these four individuals, and how they stand alongside each other through even the most dire of situations. It may often be an absurd film that ventures into some very surreal territory, but it’s also very much anchored within reality, being far more than just a darkly comical psychological thriller. A profoundly moving statement on class struggle in the contemporary world, Parasite focuses on the unfortunate binary between “rich” and “poor” and all the additional stigmata that come along with being aligned with a certain social class, and how it tends to impact entire families. The tension between the rich and the poor form the basis of the film, and even when you look beyond the very stylistic execution, this is a bleak and harrowing story about two families that should be considered almost exactly the same – the archetypal nuclear family consisting of a mother and a father, son and daughter. Yet, they couldn’t be perceived as being any more different, solely due to the divide between their social classes, and there is a sense of dehumanization that comes along in the interactions between different classes, where one is viewed less as an individual and more as the embodiment of certain socially-mediated beliefs. The disparity between the working class and the wealthy people they serve forms a central element of the film, and it manages to be one of the few films on this subject that never becomes saccharine and manipulative, and doesn’t feel the need to resort to preaching to the audience about social injustice, rather conveying the sentiment through gloriously acidic dark comedy and unhinged psychological terror, which makes it even more potent, and facilitates some really insightful forays into the human condition and the social situations that sculpt it.

Parasite is a film that works well in a number of different ways. Through darkly comical means, it manages to become a manifesto for the adage of working smart rather than working hard, which results in a something shocking but consistently entertaining satire that grabs hold of societal ideals and deconstructs them gradually but without much mercy. However, beneath the outrageous story there is something deeper, with the film developing into a chilling social drama that looks at ideologies embedded within our culture, and how institutionalized beliefs can actually be quite dangerous. A very peculiar film that unfolds with a certain unpredictable intensity, allowing the audience to be liberated from any expectations. Dark and twisted, but also entirely elegant in its approach to a strange story that could have easily been either heavy-handed or excessively offensive had it not been crafted by the punctilious hands of Bong Joon-ho, someone whose vision oscillates between delightfully sophisticated and gloriously deranged. While Parasite is built on its dynamic premise and very bold execution that takes hold of the viewer, its successes lie in its intricacies, which is where the film balances the absurdity of the story with the dire social commentary that served as the impetus. Some of the film’s most effective moments occur not in the broad strokes, but in the most subtle details that hint towards the differences between the two families, whether intentional or not, causing the tension – something as seemingly insignificant as a scent or off-hand reference can set off a cataclysmic series of events that dismantles everything these two groups had so meticulously constructed over the years, sending them into unrestrained, unsettling social chaos that shifts perspectives and challenges conventions, all the while being outright hilarious and disconcertingly terrifying in equal measure. Whether the message this film imparts and the conclusion it reaches is for better or for worse is entirely up to the viewer to decide, but there’s no denying that Parasite is an effortlessly memorable film that will doubtlessly come to be seen as a truly defining work of contemporary cinema, and a disquieting expedition into  the serpentine roots of modern culture.