Director Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-winning darkly comedic thriller Parasite takes a sharp turn into horror near the end, and it's all the better for it. With only seven feature films on his resume so far, Bong has already cemented himself as one of the best directors to ever emerge for South Korean cinema, and now that he's won the Oscar for Best Director, clearly he's rapidly become one of the most talented filmmakers in the world overall. It's a bit sad that none of Parasite's terrific cast were even nominated for acting Oscars, although they at least did win top honors at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Parasite certainly wouldn't be considered a horror film in the traditional sense, although some have argued aspects of it are close to the genre in spirit. Parasite can be a very cynical, ruthless movie at times, and around the midway point, ditches much of its clever humor for real human drama about how far struggling people will go to maintain a better life once they've managed to rise up to it.
One fascinating thing about Parasite is that the film arguably has no real villains. The Kim family lie and scheme, but it's out of desperation to escape their impoverished life. The Parks are oblivious to the struggles of the poor, and reek of arrogance, but don't really do anything that villainous. Then there's Gook Moon-gwang and her husband Oh Geun-sae, who have the same concerns as the Kims, perhaps to an even more desperate degree. Villains or not, Parasite's ending sure does feature a lot of brutal, bloody murders, racking up a body count with quickness that would make Jason Voorhees blush.
Parasite's dark ending is set firmly in motion when most of the Kim family returns home to find their semi-basement apartment flooded by a bad storm, destroying all their possessions, and rendering it temporarily inhospitable. They're then forced to spend the night at a storm shelter, sleeping on the floor. The Kims are demoralized, and when they're invited to a sudden birthday party for the Parks' young son the next day, none are in a good frame of mind, and the Parks' dismissive attitude about the storm doesn't help matters.
While there, Kim Ki-woo heads down to the secret bunker where the Kims had left Gook Moon-gwang and her husband Oh Geun-sae after a previous brawl, carrying the Scholar's Stone, and many fans have assumed he went there to kill them. It turns out that Gook Moon-gwang has already died of prior injuries, and a crazed Oh Geun-sae seizes the stone and nearly bludgeons Kim Ki-woo to death, before heading out to the party with a knife and stabbing Kim Ki-jung. The birthday boy has a seizure in response, and Oh Geun-sae attempts to kill Mr. Park before being skewered to death by Kim matriarch Park Chung-sook. Mr. Park visibly recoils at Oh Geun-sae's smell - after commenting several times on Mr. Kim's apparent stench - causing Mr. Kim to become temporarily insane and stab Park to death.
For those keeping score, Parasite's last few minutes sees three people get stabbed to death, one person nearly get his head caved in, a child have a seizure and be rushed to the hospital, and another person revealed to have died of a prior concussion. It's a chaotic sequence, and is made all the darker by the ending implying that Mr. Kim will one day die inside the bunker he's now hiding in to avoid prison. The Parks lost their father, the Kims lost their daughter/sister, and Gook Moon-gwang and Oh Geun-sae literally lost everything. Parasite may not be a horror film, but it's likely to leave viewers just as disturbed at the end as any good fright flick would.
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