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Where to watch: Hulu
Haven’t had the chance to watch Parasite just yet? No judgement here — but what are you waiting for! The South Korean thriller was met with resounding positive reviews from critics and audiences around the world — and for good reason.
Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Parasite follows two very different South Korean families — the Kims and the Parks—as they navigate a twisted symbiotic relationship that highlights greed and class discrimination.
Thinking about watching Parasite? Here’s what you need to know:
How can I watch Parasite?
Parasite was first released in American theaters back in 2019, but you can stream film from the comfort of home with a subscription to Hulu. The movie is also available to rent on Amazon Prime or YouTube TV (for an extra fee).
What do I need to know about Parasite before streaming?
This award-winning movie has won the hearts of viewers around the globe for its twisted plot and social commentary, but its warm reception and global attention is even more significant given its limited theater run and modest marketing budget outside of Korea.
We’re big fans of the flick, naming it on our list of the greatest movie plot twists (since 2000).
Mashable’s Sam Haysom explains:
With multiple big twists played out by a formidably talented cast and hauntingly lavish cinematography, Bong Joon-ho’s comedic thriller Parasite follows the Kim family — Ki-taek, Chung-sook, Ki-jung, and Ki-woo — who are making a modest living folding pizza boxes in downtown Seoul. Together, they create an elaborate scheme to all get cushier jobs working for an affluent family, the Parks, who need assistance in their slick mansion with things like hastily assembled ram-don. This scheme means getting the current staff fired, including their longtime housekeeper, Moon-gwang, who, uh, left something behind in the house. And all the while that light won’t stop flickering above the stairs…
What are people saying about the movie?
Parasite is one of the most widely praised films of recent years, having won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Foreign Language Film. Parasite also took home the coveted Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Here’s what critics have said about the multi-award-winning film:
Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent
[Bong Joon-ho]’s work is as playful as it is sincere and revelatory. He’ll make you feel at home, and then rip the rug out from under you.”
Bilge Ebiri, Vulture:
When I interviewed Bong years ago, he told me that he loves genre movies but hates genre conventions, and here he upends that idea: Parasite is not a genre movie, but it occasionally employs — carefully, playfully, deliriously — genre conventions and all the assumptions that come with them. You keep expecting Parasite to turn into one thing, but it keeps turning into something else. It mutates, like a real parasite trying to hang on to its host.
Karen Han, Polygon:
Watching the Jenga tower wobble is exhilarating, and led to not only one but two bursts of applause during the critics’ screening at Cannes (the only film I attended to earn any applause before credits rolled). The contrast between the delicate balance the characters must maintain and Bong’s bombastic, pull-out-all-the-stops storytelling is a pure adrenaline rush — I was shaking when I left the theater, and remained that way for at least an hour.
Stephen Dalton, the Hollywood Reporter:
The performances are uniformly solid, with special credit due to the child and teen actors. Hong Kyung-pyo’s high-gloss cinematography combines lustrous candy-shop colors with kinetic precision, while Lee Ha-jun’s production design is typically superb, especially the elegantly minimalist Park family mansion, which serves as both deluxe fortress and sinister prison. Spliced into Jung Jaei-il’s dread-laden score, fragrant bouquets of classical music provide bustling comic counterpoint as well as wry commentary on the snooty cultural values being slowly eviscerated onscreen.
Good luck arguing against its brilliant, inimitable, all-encompassing craftsmanship. The film is laugh-out-loud funny, an astute blend of humanity and absurdity, thrilling until its final depraved moments, a pristinely shot modern architectural feast for the eyes, a razor-sharp socio-economic critique, and a cryptic operatic drama…Everything is quickly and sharply edited, teeming with impressive, geometric cinematography. He reveals just enough to let you in on what’s going on but keeps enough from you to always leave you at the edge of your seat in a state of thrilled delight. It’s Bong’s economical screenwriting and inventive direction that makes Parasite such a triumph, and the plot summary ends here.
David Ehrlich, IndieWire:
Giddy one moment, unbearably tense the next, and always so entertaining and fine-tuned that you don’t even notice when it’s changing gears, Parasite takes all of the beats you expect to find in a Bong film and shrinks them down with clockwork precision. The movie doesn’t feel smaller than the globe-trotting Okja, only more constricted…the film contains a number of inspired sequences that pulse with the same, chaotic, morally relative madness of Bong’s signature moments.
Hoping to finally watch Parasite? Go with Hulu — you’ll get to watch the award-winning movie, plus gain access to so much more content thereafter.
