Genre Research: Parasite

CAMS: The premise of the movie is to highlight class diversity. The director, Bong Joon-Ho, marvelously uses different camera angles and shots to create a splitting camera composition. The poor Kim family is shown to be consistently lower in camera angles, than the rich Park family. Establishing shots of the Kim family shows them living in destitute and the direction further embraces poverty by showing the Kim family through shaky flash pans and distorted camera compositions. On the other hand, the rich Park family is shown through wide angles, to display their wealth, and elegant transitions whenever their scenes shift. Shot, reverse, shots are also prevalent and used to parallel the two families’ socio-economic class. In dialogue, the Park family is almost always shown in a low angle to give a sense of superiority to the audience and other characters in the film.

CLAMPS: The costumes for this movie is fairly basic. The characters wear regular, age-appropriate clothing and give off the perfect suburban city vibe. Obviously, the park family dresses in more expensive clothing than the Kim family, whose clothes are slightly ragged. Lighting in this movie is discriminatory, here’s why. The Kim family is portrayed to be living in the slums of South Korea, so the lighting has a hue of mustard yellow to truly encapsulate the dirty and mangy environment they live in. The Park family, however, lives in a mansion whose lighting directly deifies the Park family. The actors in this movie are all Korean and the movie is subtitled in Korean and directed by a Korean director. All in all, the acting in this movie is pretty spot-on as the characters perfectly embody their character’s quirks and social normalities. No absurd amount of makeup is used unless it is used for blood or damage effects. Props in the movie mainly show the wealth and poverty of the two families. The Park family’s porcelain and Range Rover are used to showing their immense wealth, whereas the Kim family uses disposable and fairly second-hand items and eat junk food. The scenery in the movie is the most impressive when displaying the Park family mansion. All the extravagant items and architecture accurately presents what the 1% would own. The Kim family, however, lives in a basement in a direct line to fumigations, floods, and drunk urinators, all of which are used to paint the decrepit environment of the Kim’s. 

Common Sound: The non-diegetic sound used in this movie are mainly eerie. In one scene where the Kim family discovers a couple living in the Park family basement, the scene is blanketed with anticipatory music before the reveal of the couple. In chase scenes, the score is upbeat and meant to parallel the distress the characters are feeling, with the audience. As for diegetic sound, it is interlaced with non-diegetic to further build the suspense of the scene. Sound is also essential in the storytelling of this movie and events are preceded by a confirmatory sound effect.

Common Editing: The editing in this film primarily is meant to show the class division of the two families. There are parallel shots of the two families essentially doing the same things, but split in between to further emphasize the divide. Not until the two families converge, do the shots begin to distort as the two’s polarity starts to clash and is shown by frantic cuts and dramatic zoom-ins.

Elements of a Thriller: Elements of the thriller genre mainly focus on building suspense. The wonder of “what happens next” to a character keeps the audience hooked on the story. To effectively have a thriller, the audience must have to know a possible end goal of what the protagonist is journeying up towards. The addition of time sensitivity helps push the pace and anticipation of the film. Finally, the story must progress in difficulty for the protagonist. Increase antagonistic forces must be presented for the audience to stay intrigued in the plot. 

What I like: The movie had an extremely interesting plot and theme of class diversity. The cast was completely Korean and this is good for international cinema. Almost all of the scenes have a symbolic meaning to them. The acting was convincing and moving. The structure of the story progression was unique. The ending was truly impressive.

What I didn't like: No real negatives except that one needs to understand Korean or read subtitles to understand the movie. 

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