What will make many people want to miss “Parasite” is the fact that it was produced in South Korea and it has subtitles. This is the reason why I waited so long to see this movie after it was released over a month ago. Mainly due to the critics ratings, as high as 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, have eventually made seeing this foreign film mandatory.

The dominant idea behind Parasite is about being rich and being poor. Does being extremely rich make you evil, or does being extremely poor make you evil, because of your desperation to no longer be poor? The story of Parasite is about a family who is so poor, the only way they can make any income is by assembling of all things, pizza boxes for a local delivery service. The four of them live in a hellish ground floor apartment in one of the poorest sections of South Korea, within a grim reality that is at times, hard to watch. Through a series of strange events, the teenage son in this family gets a job with a rich family tutoring their teenage daughter. Following a series of manipulations, lies and evil actions that drive out the the maid and driver the rich family employ; this grifter family slowly infiltrates their way into this rich family taking over all the jobs by driving out their other employees.

The theme of this entire story is the contrast between rich people and poor people and the way rich people look down upon people who have nothing; and the way poor people are so envious of the privileged lives of the rich. There are at least 4 incidents in this story, where the rich family complain about the smell of the people they have hired, and we find out later during a flood about the poor sewage in the poor section where they live. The resentment of the poor family, despite their criminal actions of lying their way into four jobs, eventually becomes unbearable and contributes to the dramatic ending.

The quality of the acting and the story of this film was strong enough to get used to the subtitles within the first 30 minutes and I though the ending was about as unexpected and insane as any ending I have seen in a long time.

I agree with the 99% rating for Parasite and I do recommend this movie.