The new movie from Korea called Parasite has everything: drama, comedy, suspense, terror, sex and violence. It is one of the year’s best.

The lower middle class Kim family (dad, mom, adult son and adult daughter) manages, via a series of lies and deceptions, to become support staff for the upper class Park family (dad, mom, young teen daughter and preteen son). As they say in click bait headlines, you won’t believe what happens next!

Here’s an interesting catch: neither family is composed of bad people. The Kims scrape by in a small basement apartment because the outfits that dad has recently worked for have gone belly up or had layoffs. The other family members are also not employed. Yes, they misrepresent themselves to the Parks but they are not immoral people.

The Parks live in a gorgeous modern design home and, while they enjoy the perks of wealth, they are not obnoxious. They, too, are generally likable people. There’s no real villain here.

Parasite won the Palm d’Or award for best film at the Cannes Film Festival and is the 2^nd highest rated 2019 film (after Joker) on the imdb.com Top 250 at #36.

Bong Joon Ho who co-wrote and directed 2013’s Snowpiercer and 2017’s Okja (both in English) is the director and co-writer of this film, which is in Korean with English subtitles. The cast and crew for Parasite are all Korean.

Although the story is set in Seoul, this is a story that could be set in almost any American urban area and acted by an American cast. This clever, imaginative film hits several emotional buttons. Parasite is “must see.”