11 Movies to Watch If You Loved ‘Parasite’ – menshealth.com

If you’re just now getting into contemporary South Korean cinema, we recommend you start here. Based on the short story by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (which, by the way, is already a challenging premise), Lee Chang-dong’s Burning covers similar Parasite ground, examining South Korea’s class schisms and the general vacuousness of wealth. Featuring an incredible Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead) performance… and a lot of blood.

Here’s hoping Bong takes a crack at Murakami one of these days.

Stream Burning Here

Chronicling the story of Frédéric Bourdin, a 36-year-old French man who impersonated a missing 16-year-old kid from Texas, fooling the parents, the police, and his classmates (well, kind of), this documentary is of another order. It’s all about people who aren’t who they say they are, but in the most extreme and unbelievably true way possible.

Stream The Imposter Here

Like, Parasite, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Killing of a Sacred Dear is a mental assault of a movie. Like a germ, one teenager slowly infects the family of a friendly surgeon, forcing the most extreme of decisions. Tonally, the film is right on point with Parasite: bite your tongue hard and laugh through the bleeding.

Stream The Killing of a Sacred Deer Here

Bong put this on his list of the best movies ever made, saying it had one of the biggest impacts on his career as a director. And while Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s crime drama may be most similar to Bong’s 2003 Memories of Murder, we recommend giving it a watch post-Parasite as well.

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Also on Bong’s list, and a film with an even more direct influence on Parasite, is Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid, a South Korean drama featuring domestic destruction, predatory home invasion, and everything else we found so disturbing and suspenseful about Parasite. It’s also just a classic piece of South Korean cinema.

Stream The Housemaid Here

Jordan Peele’s thriller takes on similar issues of class rage, though with a more obvious sci-fi concept. Both Bong and Peele are masters of seriocomedy, dramatic films that contain a core of sardonic fun. And Us does not disappoint. It may well be, thematically, the American equivalent of Bong’s recent masterpiece. Plus, let’s be real: Lupita N’yongo deserved the Oscar this year.

Stream Us Here

If class conflict and violent upward social progression is your jam, then Snowpiercer is your train. Set in a frozen post-apocalyptic world in which the remnants of humanity live on a permanently moving train (separated in each car by class), Snowpiercer mashes horror and suspense and intelligent sci-fi into one of the most impressionable movies of the past decade.

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Based on the novel by Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis takes on the sort of decadence and decay that looms over Parasite for much of the film. But, of course, not without some wicked dark humor. It’s also the film that had us start loving Robert Pattinson.

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Pretty much anything by David Fincher is going to scratch your Parasite itch: duplicity of characters, manipulation of audiences, ominousness hanging over just about everything. With Gone Girl, Fincher is at the height of his powers. We’re just wrapped around his directorial fingers.

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Did you like how deranged Parasite got toward the back end? Well, deranged is director Ari Aster’s specialty. Midsommar is his follow-up to Hereditary, and it’s darkness-combined-with-dark comedy lasts from very start to very finish. It’s best to go into this one like Parasite: without knowing very much. But there’s a big old european festival, and some early 20’s kids, and that’s enough to get the stew going.

This is another one that really could’ve (and possibly should’ve) been a contender for Best Actress this year—it’s a true star-making turn for Florence Pugh, and Jack Reynor is a highlight as well as her aloof boyfriend.

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The emptiness of wealth, the latent violence behind excess, parody, comedy, blood. Unlike Parasite, the killing doesn’t wait until the end. The killing bubbles up almost immediately.

Stream American Psycho Here