Making history as the first foreign-language movie to take home the Best Picture award at the Oscars, Bong Joon-ho's 2019 movie Parasite has had a huge cultural impact already and encouraged more people to engage with both world cinema as well as more left-field dramas and thrillers in general.
Those film fans who loved the story and its execution, and want to see something just as unpredictable and expertly made, should make sure to check out some of the other brilliantly unpredictable movies like Parasite that are out there.
Updated on February 20th, 2022 by Mark Birrell: Movies like Parasite don't exactly come around every week, or even every year. However, there are many examples of not only great Korean films but world cinema also that reflect the quality and themes shown in Parasite. Whether they're from Hollywood or the other side of the globe, what the best movies like Parasite all have in common is their top-tier direction and flawlessly gripping stories.
Mother (2009)
● Available on Crackle, Vudu, Prime Video, and Tubi
While all of Bong Joon-ho's filmography should be of interest to someone looking for movies like Parasite, his 2009 film, Mother, is of particular note. This is not only because of its unpredictable plot about an elderly woman trying to exonerate her son for the murder of a young girl but also because of its grounded look at working-class struggles in contemporary South Korea.
Like Parasite, the film expertly balances dark comedy, ethereal drama, and jolts of shocking violence. The work of the films' shared cinematographer, Hong Kyung-pyo, also beautifully emphasizes the director's most distinct characteristics throughout.
Good Time (2017)
● Available on Netflix
This gritty and emotional crime thriller from Josh and Benny Safdie follows Robert Pattinson's would-be bank robber as he loses his developmentally disabled brother to the prison system after a botched job. He then begins a frantic mission to raise the money for his bail as quickly as humanly possible and through any means necessary.
Pattinson's unwavering central performance, together with the equally boundless energy from the presentation and direction of the movie, means that the audience is never quite sure where Good Time is going to go next. It's not an elegant crime movie like Parasite but the depths that the lead character is willing to stoop to in order to wriggle out of yet another inescapable situation make it equally ingenious.
Infernal Affairs (2002)
Starring Hong Kong movie giants Andy Lau and Tony Leung as two undercover informers on opposite sides of the police's war on a triad boss, Infernal Affairs stunned audiences across the world with its twisting game of cat and mouse as each spy hunts for the other.
It's one of a number of Departed, becoming the movie that finally earned master filmmaker Martin Scorsese his Oscar for Best Director. Bong Joon-ho specifically singled Scorsese out as a major influence when he won his own Oscar for Best Director, so his endorsement should mean a lot to a Parasite fan.
Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time (2012)
● Available on Pluto TV and Tubi
A certifiable modern classic in the vein of Scorsese's own gangster movie creations, Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time follows Choi Min-sik's low-level corrupt customs agent on a journey up through the criminal empires of Busan, South Korea in the 1980s and '90s.
Similar to a modern crime epic like Breaking Bad, the story may seem cut and dried from the go but it always finds ways to keep the audience on tenterhooks as to how a scene is going to really end up. Like Parasite, the movie is also an entertainingly insightful look into social ladder-climbing through crime in a changing country, with the progression of the story and the mannerisms of the characters being hugely enriched by the idiosyncrasies of Korean culture.
Shoplifters (2018)
• Available on Hulu
A Tokyo family living in poverty shoplifts to survive with the kids being the crucial part of the process. Though Hirozaku Kore-eda's Palme d'Or winning film is much more of an emotional drama than a crime thriller like Parasite, these scenes of the actual shoplifting routine are as nail-bitingly tense as any con that the Kim family pull off.
Shoplifters is a heartwrenching exploration of the concept of family that has developed in the face of the indifference of the modern world and hides just as satisfyingly shocking a third-act secret as Parasite does.
The Housemaid (1960)
● Available on The Criterion Channel
Bong Joon-ho has stated numerous times that Kim Ki-young's horror melodrama has been a huge influence on his overall voice as a filmmaker, as well as being a direct inspiration for Parasite.
The story may ostensibly seem like a conventional cautionary tale about the weak-willed husband of a burgeoning middle-class household being manipulated by a monstrous femme fatale. However, through sudden twists in the plot, the film exposes many of the deepest social anxieties being felt by a transforming Korea at the time. Im Sang-soo's 2010 remake of the movie should also be of particular interest to Parasite fans, as it takes a much less sympathetic approach to the middle-class family in the social hierarchy, as Bong Joon-ho would do in Parasite.
A Hard Day (2014)
● Available on Vudu
Thrillers don't come much more suspenseful than Kim Seong-hun's A Hard Day. The movie's plot follows a corrupt cop dealing with his mother's funeral and a sudden internal affairs raid on his office when he accidentally hits and kills a man with his car, with all of this only being the very beginning of his incredibly dark, funny, and grueling ordeal.
Though certainly more of an action movie than a drama like Parasite, the story has its own unique tone and more than enough surprises to stun the most discerning of film fans.
Oldboy (2003)
Adapted from the manga of the same name, Park Chan-wook's iconic mystery thriller is a strange, bleak, beautiful, and totally enthralling movie experience that follows a man who's imprisoned for 15 years without explanation only to be suddenly released and challenged to find out why by his elusive captor.
Along with the other two movies in the director's so-called Vengeance Trilogy, Oldboy helped popularize the 21st-century Korean cinema boom in the West, eventually being remade to little fanfare a decade later. The original is essential viewing for fans who like Parasite's darkest and most violent bursts of energy, though it may push the limits of their taste for those things.
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
● Available on Kanopy
Released just 2 weeks shy of exactly 70 years apart, on different sides of the globe, Kind Hearts and Coronets was–and still is–just as darkly funny and as insightful a story about social ladder-climbing by any means necessary as Parasite is now.
Following a deceptively genteel murderer, as he exacts an incredibly improbable plan to reclaim the upper-class title that he was denied due to the lowly status of his father, this Ealing comedy is both steeped in history and antiquated culture yet still feels decades ahead of its time even today.
The Handmaiden (2016)
● Available on Prime Video
Park Chan-wook's period drama, The Handmaiden transposes the class structure of Victorian Britain for Korea under Japanese rule in this adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith and the tale is no less of a shocking and beguiling ride than any of the movies in the Vengeance Trilogy.
Centering on an elaborate con involving various layers of seduction and then-taboo desires, the ever-changing plot all fits together in the end as part of the film's satisfying puzzle. Besides the plot involving lower-status characters infiltrating and manipulating a high-class household, Parasite fans will be sucked in by Chung Chung-hoon's gorgeous cinematography.
