'Parasite': An 'Upstairs, Downstairs' Thriller Bound for Oscars

The families’ disparate lives become entangled when the Kims’ underemployed college-aged son (Woo-sik Choi) gets a gig tutoring the Parks’ sulky teenage daughter. Before long he insinuates his forger sister (So-dam Park), securing her a spot peddling art therapy to the Park's naughty prepubescent son.

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With a bit of clever chiseling and the energy of a caper, out go the Parks’ chauffeur and the housekeeper. Enter Mr. and Mrs. Kim (Bong's frequent leading man Song Kang-Ho, 52, and Hyae Jin Chang). For a brief moment of near security, the slum family has risen by their wits to unexpected riches.

Naturally, it's short-lived. When the Parks take their spoiled son glamping for his birthday, the Kims take over the villa. They luxuriate in liquor and a world where they can see the sky from an actual backyard. They're in fat city — until they're interrupted by the Parks’ former housekeeper, who's returned to reclaim an item she left behind.

From that point, the film erupts, taking a violent and darker turn. And yet the narrative remains rooted in a strong sense of character. Each interaction within the Kim family reveals more about its members individually and how they function as a unit in the face of adversity — and how the indolent Parks surround themselves with dysfunction and judgment and sensuality and are essentially lost to each other.

Moving with a liquid swiftness despite a 131-minute running time, Parasite builds on a series of amazing sequences, including the Kims’ desperate escape from the antiseptic villa through rain-soaked streets, plunging down, down, down to the slums where overflowing sewage swamps their smelly subterranean flat.

Nimble, funny, complex and heartbreaking, Parasite is a stinging indictment of economic inequality. It's also a rip-roaring tale of two cities and two families colliding with such force that society itself could crumble and collapse into chaos. Like last year's movie for grownups Roma, this South Korean entry will be a frontrunner for best foreign language film come Oscar time — and a likely best picture contender, too.