READERS' CHOICE #26: PARASITE (2019)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, at some point after it came out in 2019, but before it won Best Picture in 2020

BEST SEQUENCE

The ram-don scene is definitely in the running, and I'll talk about it more a little later, but on this watch the climactic garden party scene really hit me hard

BEST LINE

"Jessica, only child. Illinois, Chicago. Classmate of Kim Jin-mo. He's your cousin."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

99%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"An urgent, brilliantly layered look at timely social themes, Parasite finds writer-director Bong Joon Ho in near-total command of his craft."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan."
DIRECTOR

Bong Joon Ho

MAIN CAST

Song Kang-ho, Jang Hye-jin, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Cho Yeo-jeong, Lee Sun-kyun, Lee Jung-eun, Park Myung-hoon

THOUGHTS

• The first time I saw Parasite I liked it, but I expected to like it more. I was very happy to see it win Best Picture that year (and what a groundbreaking moment that was, the first non-English film to win the award), but there was still a part of me that wondered if I was missing something
• I'm happy to say, though, that I liked it more upon rewatch (and as always, this is your reminder that the Thrill Score doesn't necessarily indicate how good it is as a movie. This is definitely a better movie than 7/10). Spoilers follow. I was more prepared for the mid-movie reveal that really threw me for a loop the first time, and it was even more thrilling than I expected - there were more deaths than I remembered
• I liked the way the Kim family's schemes got steadily worse and worse and more and more destructive. Starting with a little bit of document forgery, they just keep getting more embroiled in their own web, graduating to framing the driver to get him fired, and then basically physical assault by purposefully causing the housekeeper to have a severe allergic reaction
• And then I do want to talk about the ram-don scene, a really tense sequence of events, when the Kims rush around to hide the evidence of their betrayal while the Kim mother makes ram-don, a combination of two cheap packs of instant noodles, topped with ridiculously expensive beef (incidentally, the word "ram-don" was coined for the English subtitles as a combination of ramen and udon, but the actual word used in the movie is "Chapaguri," combining Chapagetti and Neoguri. Also, I highly recommend this video from Binging with Babish of him making the dish). This also leads to the first death of the movie, even if it was (somewhat) unintentional, when the previous housekeeper gets kicked down the stairs
• I also liked the aftermath of the ram-don scene, the tension of the Kim family needing to stay hidden, to then finally escape and return home in a torrential downpour to their flooded apartment and all of their ruined belongings. From this point forward there's an escalating simmer that I found very effective, only to finally boil over at the birthday party in the garden
• Finally, we've talked about a number of Best Picture winners already, and we'll talk about quite a few more, but this is the most recent one by far (and I was about to say that Parasite was the most recent movie on the Readers' Choice list, period, but actually Midsommar has it beat by a couple of months). Parasite is also the only Best Picture winner on the Readers' Choice list. Back to the AFI list, we discussed Gladiator a while ago, the Best Picture of the year 2000, but that was a movie that I added in myself and it wasn't actually included by the AFI. In fact, the most recent Best Picture winner on the AFI list was Titanic, released in 1997, and which we'll be talking about eventually

Up next: One of my faves, Evil Dead II from 1987, with possibly some mention of the other movies in the franchise as well

READERS' CHOICE #27: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008) AND LET ME IN (2010)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

8.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, for both, but I saw the American version (Let Me In) before I saw the Swedish original (Let the Right One In)

BEST SEQUENCE

The pool scene, with preference given to the Swedish version (I especially like how brightly it's lit)

BEST LINE

"I'm twelve. But I've been twelve for a long time"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

98% (Swedish) and 88% (American)

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Let the Right One In reinvigorates the seemingly tired vampire genre by effectively mixing scares with intelligent storytelling."

and

"Similar to the original in all the right ways -- but with enough changes to stand on its own -- Let Me In is the rare Hollywood remake that doesn't add insult to inspiration."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A bullied boy forms a unique friendship with his new neighbor, who is a vampire."

DIRECTOR

Tomas Alfredson

and

Matt Reeves

MAIN CAST

Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar

and

Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloë Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins 

THOUGHTS

• Doing things a little differently with this one and reviewing two movies at the same time, the Swedish original and the American remake. They are indeed very similar and equally thrilling, but I do give the edge to the filmmaking in the Swedish one, while I think the acting is slightly better in the American version. The Swedish movie has main characters named Oskar and Eli, and the American counterparts are Owen and Abby, so I'll refer to them as Oskar/Owen and Eli/Abby from now on
• I really like these movies, so much so that I was tempted to give them a higher score than 8.5, but the Thrill Scale must be respected. I will say, however, that these are my favourite vampire movies (and incidentally, it's not meant to be a surprise. It's made clear pretty early on that Eli/Abby is a vampire)
• I love the tenderness and the vulnerability we see while the relationship starts to form between Oskar/Owen and Eli/Abby, and this goes both ways, like when Eli/Abby eats candy, even though she knows it will make her violently sick, just to spare Oskar/Owen's feelings. There's a more cynical way to read this, that this is all just a manipulative ploy by Eli/Abby to gain a new servant, but that's honestly not how I see it. Despite the fact that Eli/Abby has been alive for centuries, I believe that she still has the thoughts and feelings of a 12-year-old girl, and she feels just as nervous and excited as Oskar/Owen
• I wasn't quite sure when to mention this, but I feel like now's a good time to say that while Abby, from Let Me In, is female, Eli, from Let the Right One In, was castrated centuries before. I'm going to keep using she/her pronouns for Abby/Eli, as other pronouns aren't established in the movie, and if anyone has any thoughts about the significance of this reveal, I'd love to hear them
• I also think it's incredibly poignant to realize that Eli/Abby's servant at the beginning of the movie, who at this point is an old man, likely started a relationship with Eli/Abby decades ago, in much the same way that we see happening with Oskar/Owen. This could also be seen as evidence that Eli/Abby is more cunning than she comes across, though, if this is a repeated pattern for her
• I realize that I haven't said much about these movies being thrilling, but they definitely are. There are sudden and shocking moments of violence, made even more effective by how clumsy and blunt they are. Eli/Abby's vampire attacks aren't graceful, they're brutal and animalistic. Perhaps even more terrifying, however, are the un-supernatural parts, the moments of human-on-human violence like the servant's botched attempts at gathering blood for Eli/Abby, or when we realize the extremes to which Oskar/Owen's bullies are wiling to go
• Although, the less said about the cat scene in Let the Right One In, the better
• Finally, I said something similar four years ago when I reviewed John Carpenter's The Thing - if you're anything like me, you've been suffering through the summer heat for the last few weeks. As a remedy, I recommend the snowy settings of these films, especially Let the Right One In. A stark, white background for these tales of young love and horrific violence, guaranteed to lower your temperature by at least a few degrees

Up next: The most recent movie on the Readers' Choice list, and a Best Picture winner to boot, it's Parasite from 2019