Parasite
Director: Bong Joon-ho

The rich, somebody once wrote, are not different – they are indifferent. It is that obliviousness of the upper class towards the underclass that drives both the comedy and the horror of Parasite. The Korean director, Bong Joon-ho, has form with twisting genre conventions (see his earlier The Host) but he surpasses himself with this latest.

It is a tale of two families in urban South Korea. One of them lives in a cramped and squalid basement where they scrape by folding pizza boxes for a delivery company. Money’s tight, so when the wifi they’ve been filching from an upstairs neighbour disappears there’s a panic – until clever daughter Ki-Jung (Park So-dam) locates another connection by crouching on the bathroom toilet (a nice comment on the internet). Her brother, Son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik), also proves himself resourceful when he blags a job as private tutor to “a rich kid”. Just how rich becomes apparent from the house where the kid’s family lives, a spacious, modernist palace of picture windows and hushed lighting.