Bong Joon-ho
He builds precision thrillers that change genre under your feet. Memories of Murder, The Host and Parasite are class warfare staged as entertainment, funny right up until the floor gives way.
Start here
Parasite
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Defining films
Keep following
Korean New Wave architects who put Korean cinema on the global map, brilliance inseparable from visceral genre.
Both use bourgeois homes as crime scenes, class violence made literal, comfortable spaces turned threatening.
Aquarius and Parasite both anatomize class from the inside, the slow grinding violence of inequality.
Both Cannes selections distributed through the East Asian art cinema prestige circuit.
In their own words
The Housemaid from Kim Ki-young is a giant tree, casting a huge shadow over Korean cinema. This idea of people from lower economic classes infiltrating the house of a rich family is a very universal theme.
For Parasite, I was really inspired by the house of Norman Bates... that sense of just delving deep into the various structures, that was a big influence from Psycho.
The way it uses sound and silence to build suspense and character is just masterful. It's one of those films that really broadened my understanding of cinematic language.
It's the opposite of Alien or Jaws in that regard. By making the monster appear so early, I wanted to show that the monster is not the most important element, but rather the family's struggle.
