Ben Travis:As soon as the
Park family embarks on a
camping trip and the Kims let
their guard down, you know it’s
going to go wrong somehow.
And Bong makes you wait for
it — out comes Park Da-hye’s
(Jung Ji-so) diary, the rinsing
of the alcohol cabinet, the
reveal of former housekeeper
Moon-gwang’s what-the-hell
secret, each incident cranking
the stakes higher and higher.
For much of that time the
increasing rainfall outside feels
purely atmospheric — a thriller
trope that also signifies how
safe the Kims feel away from
the downpour inside the lush
Park home. And then the penny
drops: the torrent means the
Parks haven’t gone camping
after all, and are mere minutes
from returning home. The genius
is that it isn’t even sleight of
hand — the rain was in plain
sight all along, but as a viewer
you’re too caught up in the
unfolding chaos to think ahead.John Nugent:How appropriate
that everything culminates with
a party — every rich person’s
favourite way to flaunt their
wealth. There’s so much going
on in this sequence: Ki-woo’s
(Choi Woo-shik) insecurity
about his status among the
great and good, the tension
bubbling between the Park andKim patriarchs — and then,
finally, Geun-sae (Park
Myung-hoon), the hermit
husband, returning as the
boogeyman that so traumatised
little Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun)
that he painted pictures of him,
ironically covered in Da-song’s
“trauma recovery cake”. The
knife he wields — echoing thecrass Native American
tomahawks that the family
already have as part of their
inappropriate costumes —
eventually finds its way into the
chest of Ki-jeong (Park So-dam)
and Dong-Ik (Lee Sun-kyun),
and the bloody chaos that
ensues is the climax of almost
every character’s storyline.John Nugent:After being so slyly funny for
most of the film,Parasite’s epilogue is strikingly
melancholy: a montage that wraps things up with
grief and regret. Kim Ki-woo wraps things up in
voiceover, which we eventually realise is a letter
to his father, delivered via morse code to his
underground hideout. It’s the very final two
scenes which are most astonishing, though:
Ki-woo, finally earning enough money to buy the
old Park home and reunite with his father as a
gentle sun trickles in — and then the reveal that
this is, for now, only an unlikely ambition. (The
film’s original title was ‘564 Years’, the amount of
time Bong estimated it would take Ki-woo to buy
the house.) It’s an extraordinary, bittersweet way
to finish up: allowing the characters a resolve that
even after everything, we feel they deserve,and
an acknowledgment that, with stagnant economic
mobility, reality is rarely so kind.RAIN STOPS
PLAY
4
Nick de Semlyen:There will surely be few sights
more memorably surreal in cinemas this year
than that ofParasite’s housekeeper, Gook Moon-
gwang (Lee Jung-eun), lodged horizontally
between two objects as she tries to open a
hidden sliding door. So complicit are we with the
Kims’ schemes by this point that it comes as a
real shock to discover, mid-film, that the owlish,
innocent-seeming domestic has a secret of her
own — namely, that she’s been hiding her
husband in a bunker beneath the house, so he
can dodge loan sharks. It’s one hell of a twist,
propelling the film into its faster-paced, bloodier
second half; incredibly, the plot development
didn’t occur to Bong until he’d been working on
the project for a few years. When it came to him,
he’s said, the rest of the script was written at
hurricane-speed.6 DA-SONG’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
7 THE ENDING
Top left:Housekeeper Gook Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun)
has a secret of her own.Above:Park Da-song (Jung
Hyeon-jun) enjoying a spot of camping.Left:This
party ends with something even worse than a clown.THE HOUSEKEEPER’S
SECRET
3
5 THE HITCHCOCK CAMEO
Nick de Semlyen: Alfred Hitchcock was a director
who liked to make a sneaky guest appearance.
And impressively, he’s still at it, thanks to Bong
sneaking a box set of Hitch’s fi lms onto a
shelf in the Park residence. A nifty nod
from one master of suspense
to another.Getty Images
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