I’ll be honest—when I first watched Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite back in 2019, I thought I was prepared for a dark comedy about two families from different worlds. What I got instead was a masterfully crafted psychological thriller that left me questioning everything about class, ambition, and the systems we live in. Even years after its historic Oscar win as the first foreign-language film to claim Best Picture, this film continues to haunt me in ways few movies ever have.
The Genius of the Title: We’re All Parasites
The brilliance of Parasite starts with its title, and it took me multiple viewings to fully appreciate Bong’s genius here. Initially, I assumed the Kim family—who systematically infiltrate the wealthy Park household—were the obvious parasites. But as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that every single character feeds off someone else in this ecosystem of inequality.
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The Parks extract labor and emotional support from their employees while remaining willfully ignorant of their struggles. The Kims scheme their way into employment through deception. Even the bunker-dwelling Moon-gwang and her husband exist as hidden parasites within the Parks’ home. Bong’s use of this biological metaphor isn’t just clever wordplay—it’s a damning critique of capitalism itself, where survival depends on exploitation.
Visual Storytelling: How Stairs and Spaces Tell the Real Story
What struck me most about Parasite wasn’t just what characters said, but how Bong used physical space to visualize class barriers. The film’s geography is its own language, and once you notice it, you can’t unsee it.
The Kim family lives in a semi-basement apartment where drunk men urinate outside their window and fumigation gas seeps through the streets. In contrast, the Parks inhabit a modernist mansion designed by a famous architect, complete with manicured lawns and floor-to-ceiling windows. But it’s the stairs—those endless stairs—that became the film’s most powerful symbol for me.
Every time the Kims travel between their world and the Parks’ world, they’re literally climbing or descending social hierarchies. The camera angles emphasize this relentlessly—shooting upward when showing the Parks, downward when showing the Kims. Bong even uses a hidden staircase leading to an underground bunker to reveal that no matter how low you think you’ve gone in society, there’s always someone beneath you, fighting for the same scraps.
The Flood Scene: When Reality Crashes Down
The rainstorm sequence remains one of the most emotionally devastating scenes I’ve experienced in cinema. While the Parks see the rain as a blessing that clears the air and allows for a beautiful camping experience in their yard, the Kims are literally fleeing down endless flights of stairs as their neighbourhood floods with sewage water.
I remember watching Ki-woo desperately clutch the scholar’s stone—that symbol of prosperity and upward mobility—as their home fills with filth. The Parks stay dry in their elevated fortress while everyone below them drowns. This visual metaphor hit me like a truck: the wealthy and poor don’t just experience life differently; they experience completely different realities from the same event.
The Smell: Class Markers You Can’t Wash Off
One of the most uncomfortable aspects of Parasite for me was the recurring motif of smell. Mr. Park constantly mentions a peculiar odor he associates with Mr. Kim—a smell that “crosses the line”. Despite the Kims’ desperate attempts to infiltrate and pass as suitable employees, their poverty literally emanates from them in ways they cannot control or erase.
This detail terrified me because it represents the invisible markers of class that no amount of scheming, forged documents, or performance can overcome. The Kims can wear the right clothes and say the right things, but they cannot change their fundamental essence in the eyes of those above them. It’s this realization that ultimately triggers the film’s violent climax.
The Ending: Hope as Prison
I’m still not sure if Parasite‘s ending is hopeful or heartbreaking—probably both. Ki-woo’s plan to someday earn enough money to buy the Parks’ house and free his father from the bunker reads like a fantasy, a mathematical impossibility given income inequality.
Bong doesn’t give us catharsis or revolution. Instead, he traps his characters—and by extension, us—in cycles that perpetuate endlessly. As one wealthy family replaces another, new parasitic relationships form. The system remains unchanged because the system is designed to remain unchanged.
What devastated me most was recognizing that Ki-woo’s hope—his belief that hard work and determination will eventually lead to success—might be the very thing imprisoning him. The film suggests that for those at the bottom, hope can be as destructive as despair when the structural barriers are insurmountable.
Why Parasite Still Matters in 2026
What makes Parasite a masterpiece isn’t just its technical brilliance or its historic awards sweep. It’s that Bong crafted a film that transcends its Korean setting to speak universal truths about capitalism, inequality, and human nature.
The wealth gap has only widened since 2019, making the film’s critique more relevant than ever. We live in a world where the rich literally occupy different physical and psychological spaces from the poor, where upward mobility feels increasingly like fantasy, and where people at the bottom are pitted against each other for survival while those at the top remain insulated.
Parasite forces us to ask uncomfortable questions: Who are the real parasites? Can anyone escape the system, or are we all trapped in roles assigned by economic circumstance? And most disturbingly—when pushed to our limits, what are we capable of doing to protect our precarious positions?
These questions kept me awake long after the credits rolled, and they still do. That’s the mark of truly great cinema—it doesn’t just entertain; it fundamentally changes how you see the world around you.
Have you watched Parasite? What aspects of the film resonated most with you? Share your thoughts in the comments below—I’d love to hear different perspectives on this complex masterpiece.
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