Parasite

Last night marked the first time I've returned to Director Bong's masterpiece since I was electrified in the theater. And damn if this thing doesn't still crack like lightning. Two things struck me dumb this time around. First and foremost is the level of precision. Parasite is a perfect construction. There's nothing wasted. Not a moment, joke or idea feels extraneous or out of place. Every beat drops a breadcrumb – of symbol, theme and character. That lead directly to its climax. This is screenwriting as master-level watchmaking. Every piece an invisible cog, powering the perfect, relentless tick-tick-tick of its story. Especially with Mickey 17's clumsiness and contrivance so close in the rearview, it's hard to fathom the quality of imagination on display. The genius of the movie's design is even more impressive when you consider, from a bird's eye view, how widely in tone and in genre it lurches. It starts as a caper comedy, an upstairs-downstairs satire laced with the structure of a heist film. Then, quickly, at its genius midpoint, the stakes ecxplode like dynamite and the movie snaps into the register of a horror film. And finally, from there – over the course of its propulsive, never-let-up second half – as our heroes are washed away by flood; and swept away by murderous impulse; and locked away in dungeons; and enraptured by visions of redemption; it elevates into something else entirely, something universal: the realm of myth. A myth that says everything about our world and our moment and what makes us human and what makes us monsters. It's as brilliant a movie as they come. For my money, the best of the 2010s, and one of the ten or so best of the millennia.