South Korean thriller Parasite has been listed as the best film of 2020 by Empire and the Guardian.
Starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik and Park So-dam, Parasite tells the tale of poor household members trying to become employees of a wealthier family. The characters pose as unrelated, high profile people.
Earlier this year, Boon Joon Ho’s thriller made history by becoming the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
The film also won a historic SAG Award for foreign-language film, as well as a Golden Globe and Chicago Film Critics Award.
Describing the film as the “world’s last happy international event and talking-point before the industry was plunged into lockdown,” the Guardian heralds Parasite as being “comparable to the 1963 Joseph Losey classic The Servant.”
“And Parasite is also part of Korean cinema’s rich seam of ‘servant’ dramas: like The Housemaid by Kim Ki-young in 1960, remade in 2010 by Im Sang-soo and also Park Chan-wook’s classic servant class mystery drama The Handmaiden.”
Meawhile, Empire particularly praises Ho’s directing. “Bathed in Hitchcockian suspense, nodding to decades of Asian horror movies, peppered with laugh-out-loud lines, it’s a supremely entertaining ride, flawlessly executed by Director Bong with precise craft and a knockout ensemble cast,” Empire writes.
In other news, Minari starring Steven Yeun was recently listed as the 4th best film of 2020.
