Halloween Movie Recommendation

With Halloween right around the corner, it is time to indulge in gory horror films and delicious sweet treats. To accommodate one’s spooky needs, the critically acclaimed film and 2020 Academy Award Winner for Best Picture Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-Ho, is the perfect fit. It captures both the grotesque and comical nature of the holiday spirit. 

The movie follows the Kim family as they move their way up in social status through scamming the wealthy. In the beginning, protagonist and son, Ki-Woo, finds luck after earning a job tutoring the daughter of the affluent Park family. Soon after, his father, mother, and sister mimic his lead as they finesse working for the same family, despite having no experience or background for their positions. Through hiding their identities and pretending to be strangers, the Kim’s aim to infiltrate the Park house all while earning some money to help them survive. During this process, the family manages to fire one of the original housekeepers, Mun-kwang, who eventually comes back to reveal her husband, who has been stowed away in a bunker beneath the house. At this point, the horror aspect begins and things turn for the worst. The two families physically battle it out for their place working for the Park’s. 

Initially, the Kim’s seriously injure the couple and trap them in the bunker, thinking that they would never get out. That is, until the Park’s youngest son’s birthday party that’s held outside their house. What starts out as a fun filled day evolves into a violent and bloody chaos as Kun-sae, Mun-kwang’s husband, emerges and launches the first attack of a mass murder spree. As the innocent bystanders panic and leave, the patriarch of the Kim’s escapes only to hide from the police and his family in the same bunker that housed his predecessor who was stabbed and beaten to his death. Like many other scary horror films, Parasite is fictional. It is something that we might see in a nightmare, but never in reality. However, what is real and unfortunately terrifying is the movie’s theme that director Bong Joon-Ho suggests: the disparaging and perpetual social gap between the rich and poor. By having the father of the Kim family hiding away at the bunker in place of Mun-kwang’s husband, it shows that there will always be the upper class on top and the lower class at the bottom as he represents those less fortunate and the Park’s or now, the new family who will move in, symbolize the more fortunate. 

Ultimately, this is what I find most fascinating about this particular film and which is why I strongly urge one to view it, especially during Halloween. On a surface level, the movie hits all the components of a quintessential scary film, but once one goes beyond and explores the main idea, they find that this too, is also frightening.