A while back I heard about a new Korean movie called Parasite, which was described as a horror movie, and was extremely well received and getting excellent reviews. I like horror movies, so this sounded good, and I made a mental note to check it out if I got the opportunity.
It arrived on Netflix a while back, and I had a look at the information page. Which described it as a comedy, and a story about a family who scam their way into living in the home of a wealthy family. This didn’t sound like a horror movie at all! So I ignored it for a bit.
But recently some other things pushed the film back into my consciousness, including a passing mention somewhere that described it as a thriller. Now my curiosity was up. I Googled “Parasite movie” and tried to avoid anything that would spoil too much of the plot. One of the top suggested searches was “Is Parasite a horror movie?” I clicked that, and some of the summarised hits on the search page were even more curious. It seems that some people do describe Parasite as a horror movie, while others don’t, and there is some confusion among people asking as to whether it is a horror movie or not.
Well, this was all intriguing enough that I decided to start watching the movie last night. I got a bit over half way through before it got too late, and plan to watch the second half tonight. So far…. well, it’s entertaining enough and in fact I would describe it as a comedy more than anything else. There’s certainly no horror or even thriller aspect at all yet. Now I am wondering if there’s some bizarre twist in the second half that will come out of left field that turns the whole movie so far into some sort of psychological horror.
I’m avoiding any spoilers now, but I’ll be watching the second half right after writing this, so I’ll soon know what the story is. I just find it really bizarre how all over the place are the attempts at genre classification for this film.
In other news, today was, again, cold and rainy. There was a break in the rain after lunch and I took Scully for a walk, but luckily took an umbrella because the heavens opened again while we were out. I now have two pairs of shoes and socks that are so wet that I don’t want to put them on again. And they’re taking forever to dry because of the humidity.
My wife was out for most of the day at a felt-making class. She came home with a felt scarf with interesting patterns all over it. I used the time to work on some more Darths & Droids, trying to get ahead on the writing.
And then had three more ethics classes this evening, on the topic of “The Countryside”. I was asking the kids about the differences between life in the countryside, compared to the city. Usual answers were things about less shops, less people, less pollution, more nature, etc. Tonight one kid was from Korea and he said in the city, after school you have to go to Math Camp, or if you’re an adult you have to go to your second or third job. But in the countryside there won’t be any after-school tutoring, and you might just have one job as a farmer!
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