Back in 2019, I watched Parasite with some college friends at the AMC in The Grove, Los Angeles. To my surprise, people actually stood up and applauded after the screening. I wanted to clap too, because I really didn’t expect that Bong Joon-ho could do this. At the time, I had only seen Memories of Murder and Okja. Before 2019, I hadn’t even heard of Bong Joon-ho.I first came across his name while on set—during lunch in the crew canteen, people were chatting about directors they liked. A pretty adorable VFX producer mentioned she had worked with Bong Joon-ho on a shoot before, and that she really liked him. Everyone else nodded—yeah, he’s great, good body of work. It seemed like everyone except me had seen Memories of Murder. I started wondering if I had missed out on something important. Was I just culturally illiterate? So I secretly watched it after work. After watching it, I thought: that’s it? What’s everyone so blown away by? The filmmaking felt pretty rough, the script kind of vague, and a lot of the shots felt uncertain—like the director hadn’t figured out what he wanted but gathered everyone anyway and just started shooting. The only thing I could sense was this raw, unchecked directorial energy. Primitive, blunt, unfiltered. Something like: “This is what I want to shoot. I’m curious about this. I want to say something, even if I haven’t figured it out yet—so I’ll just shoot. What, you got a problem?” Turns out, sometimes just being raw is the best way to go.

I watched Okja just because it happened to be on Netflix. The little girl’s acting was really good, and the visual effects in the opening scenes between her and Okja were well done and engaging—so I watched the whole thing. But the ending felt abrupt. It started off funny, interesting, full of hooks—but halfway through, the deeper tensions weren’t really carried forward, and the final resolution, while sad and slightly elevated, didn’t blow me away. I completely understand how the creative energy does halfway through the creative process, it happens to me too.The beginning is full of energy, but by the middle, you start to lose steam, get tired of the theme, and want to wrap it up quickly. But as a viewer, I do have opinions about this—after all, I’m the one paying for the content.

When Parasite came out, I honestly didn’t plan to watch it. But so many people were posting about it on social media that I got curious. A college friend had a movie ticket, so I went. What can I say? This time around, the co-writer he found was really good. Where did he find this person? It felt like a whole different level from his previous work. No more anticlimax— this was like Thunderstorm (A Chinese Huaju)-level conflict layering: step-by-step buildup, peak, ending with force, and lingering resonance—like a full-blown symphony. And the set design in this film? Beautiful. Many of the compositions looked like they came straight out of Architecture Design magazine. The rich family’s mansion was dominated by yellows, wood tones, greens (plants), and blues (sky). Lots of clean straight lines—easy to frame well. And the class difference between the rich family, the semi-basement tenants, and the full-basement-dweller was expressed through physical levels: up, middle, down. Lighting and costume design followed suit: the rich family’s palette matched the house—warm, airy. The semi-basement was deep green and inky blue. The full basement was black. The further down you went, the darker it got. I was genuinely impressed. Bong is a highly imaginative director—full of ideas, always trying new things, with diverse ways of executing them. But his delivery is very inconsistent.

So after winning the Oscar, the Palme d’Or, and everything else—of course, his next film Mickey 17 drew a lot of attention. And I have only one thing to say about it: his understanding of death is quite shallow. Also, where did that Parasite co-writer go? I wanted more from them. Not recommended. If you’re really curious, just fast-forward through a YouTube plot summary. That said—Naomi Ackie is pretty charismatic and cool in this. She already had that explosive quality in Blink Twice—definitely someone I’ll keep watching in the future.