My main reason to choose this movie was to show how a great story can be portrayed even with a language barrier, this movie is so symbolic, with so much meaning behind every single shot, prop, and every character, that it requires more than one watch. The genre was also what intrigued me, thriller and dark comedy, which it stays true to it’s words.
Titles
The titles are simple and shows the production house and the title of the movie, with minimal colour and just getting the names out out there.
Introduction of Characters
4th character 
3rd character 
2nd character 
1st character
The filmmakers used a convention first by using the method of foreshadowing, where they gave the audience the order where the characters actually causes the conflict and how they affect the upcoming family.
Action and Events
The key, from the very start, is the use of light. Through out the whole film, the light represents hope, and the whole family being in a semi-basement and not fully underground represents how they still have hope of coming. The basement, with everything packed and congested, conveys the meaning of how bad the living situation is for the family. The main concern that we see the family having is not having the access to the internet. The simple use of Wi-Fi, is portrayed as a luxury which the family cannot afford.
The symbolism, like mentioned before, is shown from the starting by the mother asking what’s your plan and then the camera cutting to the medal and photo of the mother, where it is shown how the mother came in second which cancelled her plan A and now she was stuck with her second plan.
The fumigation process is what explains the title of the movie, parasite, and establishes it in the opening sequence how all of them cough and get affected except for the father, who keeps focused on making the boxes, indicating how the fumigation affected all the other members (of the family/parasites) except for one. This is hinted in the next scene when the manager from the pizza place says how 1 out 4 boxes is a reject. This whole scene explains itself in the end but it foreshadows the future of the family, yet using the same convention.
The whole family then tries to talk their way out of the paycheck that was deduced, and tries to take the job of an employee, manipulating the manager, hence playing the role of a parasite.
Night falls and Min, a friend of the son shows up, and is differentiated not only by his whole attire, but also how they physically and symbolically look up to him. The gift Min brought with him, which turns out to be fake, clearly represents how the opportunities he brought with him is also not good for the family. The character saying how it is metaphorical is also for the audience, to know it must be a symbol and not something genuine.
The whole exchange between Min and Ki-woo (the son) also establishes how Min looks down on the family as he feels less threatened on giving the job to Ki-woo then any other guy, as Ki-woo would not be able to compete against him, hence Min being safe.
Something which I took a notice of throughout the whole sequence was that the main characters look usually up when shown, but are shown to tower over the manager when manipulating her. They effect when they are together, just like parasites, and the father is shown from a high angle, hence shown alone and kind of helpless.
The reason why I chose to do an analysis on this particular movie is because it actually uses symbolism the right way. Without spoiling the movie, the filmmakers tell the whole idea of the movie in the sequence. This is what really intrigued me, how the use of light and symbols were used to convey a movie in such a order. It did not look like it was rushing or trying to convey a message forcibly, it did all of the work subtly, which asks the audience to view the movie more then once, and noticing something new every time.
The whole opening sequences how manipulating the main characters are, and we somehow feel sympathy considering they also feed off as parasite from the lady above them, by taking the advantage of the internet. We sympathize with the characters because the sequence establishes the concept that if the family is poor, it can do in order to live a better life. The whole sequence, if compared to the rest of the movie, plays a parallel part, and views the differences between the upper class and the lower class.
Genre
The film has the genres Comedy, Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Dark Comedy.
These genres itself intrigued me because I have not seen many movies where the genre Thriller and Comedy mix up very well. But the film makers made sure to not overdo both and kept a very clean and clear story which does not makes the audience confused. The genres are both shown very subtly, with the comedy not being overwhelming and the thriller also shown subtly. This film goes dark real soon real fast, with the first half being almost comedic and the second taking a full 360 turn. If we talk about the film opening itself, we are only introduced to the drama part of the film.
Theme and Topics
The main theme, which I got, is the visible difference between the upper and lower class. The film demonstrates poverty, desperation, and inequality; it dramatizes the extreme differences in the worlds between wealthy and poor families. The opening itself shows the lower class in a poor condition and how they try to make their way up by trying to take someone else’s job. Min also gives his job to his friend on the basis (which seems clear once the meaning behind dialogues are focused a little more) that his university friends might try to hit on the girl he tutors and likes, but Ki-Woo (the son) would not do such thing because he does not looks at him the way he looks at his University friends, in other words, he looks down and Ki-Woo and does not think he will be able to win the girl over. The difference gets clearer and clearer and we realize that the metaphor parasites is used for both parties.
Sound
The only time music is used is at the start of the film, with the diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds mixing with each other. The rest of the film opening follows silence and dialogues only with the occasional background noise. In the semi-underground house of the poor Kim family, there’s a lot of interference from outside noise flowing into the interior, designed with a number of Korean-style ambience sounds, including the sound of cars passing by the alley, the sound of neighborhood people, the sound of street vendors, piano practice, barking dogs, and the sound of cats, all of these emphasizes yet again on the situation which the family currently lives in. All this makes sense as the film goes on, but all these small details are what makes the audience realize what the film makers actually did as they watch the film.
Enigma Code
The main question the audience gets in their minds is how do they actually change their situation. What the film maker actually shows is the subtle and major difference between the classes living in this communist world and how the people leach off of each other to survive. Although the question of what happens is not intense at the start, the unsettling feeling increases as the movie progresses. What makes it interesting is the use of symbolism and how the audience who views the movie again gets what various dialogues and actions actually meant which makes the audience part of something and the ones who watches it the first time also are left in a daze as everything they’ve seen finally clicks. The movie itself is not complicated to understand, but it has a depth to it only those understand who really want to understand.
And all of this concludes my third and last film opening analysis.
Eesha Saeed's AS Media Blog 