ParasiteMovies like Parasite
- Key Features:
- Class conflict, Social satire, Deception, Family dynamics, Poverty, Wealth, Greed, Dark comedy, Thriller, Unexpected twist, Home invasion, Korean cinema, Prestige drama, Social commentary, Inequality, Ambition, Desperation, Violence-moderate, Intrigue
- Tone:
- serious, satirical, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Fans of social thrillers, Viewers interested in Korean cinema, Those seeking thought-provoking films, Art house enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Tension → Shock
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.
Parasite
Sung-soo has everything a man could want: a beautiful wife and children, a comfortable home and luxury car, and plenty of money in the bank. When he learns that his estranged brother, Sung-chul, has gone missing, haunting memories of their troubled past urge him to visit his brother’s apartment in search of answers.

A working class family move into a new condo purchased after 11 years of hard work. They throw a housewarming party to show his co-workers when overnight a heavy downpour creates an extremely deep sinkhole that engulfs the entire building.

Eun-yi is hired as a maid in a mansion owned by a wealthy businessman. He quickly starts seducing his employee who seemingly has little choice but to comply with his sexual advances. Soon the women of the family plot against Eun-yi who must fight an equally devious battle to protect herself.

People binge eat and suffer from extreme thirst, which leads them to go crazy for water. They cannot control themselves because they are brainwashed by a parasite.

A piano composer's family moves into a new house; when his pregnant wife collapses from working to support the family, he hires a housemaid to help with housework.

After trying to cover up a car accident that left a man dead, a crooked homicide detective is stalked by a mysterious man claiming to have witnessed the event.

A family decides to buy a lodge in a remote hiking area. Their first customer commits suicide and the distraught family buries his body to avoid the bad publicity. But their luck gets worse, the bodies start piling up, and the family becomes frantic to rectify the situation.

A teenage girl is captured by a giant mutated squid-like creature that appears from Seoul's Han River after toxic waste was dumped in it, prompting her family into a frantic search for her.

Sang-hyun is always struggling from debt, and Dong-soo works at a baby box facility. On a rainy night, they steal the baby Woo-sung, who was left in the baby box, to sell him at a good price. Meanwhile, detectives were watching, and they quietly track them down to capture the crucial evidence.

When a wife becomes the breadwinner of her family after her husband loses his job, adultery becomes part of her life.

A black comedy about the events that are set into motion in a town after a man-eating boar goes on a rampage.

For 15 days, a politician and his wife navigate a scandal after their daughter goes missing on the eve of the national elections.

Jun-oh, an insurance claims agent, faces off with a client who he suspects of committing murders with the intention of collecting insurance premiums.

A female detective investigates the cause of a high school girl’s death and uncovers a disturbing truth.

Han, a Filipino-Korean boxer hits the final punch against his opponent at an illegal game and returns home with a few dollars to pay for his mother's surgery.

The story of the journey of married couple up the social latter. The husband is professor at Seoul National University who is running for the National Assembly, and his wife is a painter.

A young man believes that his country's leaders are actually toxic reptilian aliens sent down to launch a takeover of his beloved Earth. So he decides to abduct them and force the truth out on camera in his basement that doubles as a film studio and torture chamber.

When an old collaborator gets severely injured, a veteran policeman tries to figure out the way to bring to justice the ultimately suspected aggressor, a spoiled young executive, heir to a mega corporation, who believes he is above the law.

The adventures of an upper-class suburban family abruptly confronted with the younger brother's discovery of his homosexuality, the elder sister's suicide attempt and sadomasochist tendencies, and the intrusion of a very free-spirited maid and her husband. And it all started with the arrival in the family of an innocent looking rat.

A notorious dirty cop makes an honest attempt to catch a serial killer who even murdered his own parents.

A small-time thug who collects debts for the local triad is torn between his criminal aspirations and his devotion to family.

After a massive earthquake, only one apartment building is left standing in Seoul, South Korea. Survivors flock to Hwang Gung Apartments, but residents cannot cope with the increasing numbers.

A mother lives quietly with her son. One day, a girl is brutally killed, and the boy is charged with the murder. Now, it's his mother's mission to prove him innocent.

A struggling restaurant owner, caring for his sick mom, finds a bag of cash in a sauna locker, while a customs officer gets into trouble when his girlfriend runs off with money he borrowed from a loan shark.

The mother of a missing child takes in a lost girl she finds in the woods, but soon begins to wonder if she is even human.

Over three episodes, three respectable middle-aged men find themselves behaving badly. A teacher hides his pornographic magazine from a female student. A jogger steals milk and blames it on a newspaper delivery boy. A drunk man desperately searches for a public toilet late at night.

Korea’s biggest network marketing scam reveals a far greater network of corruption and conspiracy lurking underneath.

Three elite North Korean sleeper agents live under cover for so long that they believe their cover stories are their real identities. They are shocked when they are ordered to kill one another or face death at the hands of an elite hit team.

A wealthy teen and his friends attending an elite private school uncover a dark conspiracy while looking into a series of strange supernatural events.

Jae-wan, a successful lawyer, takes on the case of a rich executive's son, who has purposely run over and killed a man and left his daughter seriously injured. It's Jae-wan's job to defend a murderer, just another rung on his career's golden-stepped ladder. His younger brother, on the contrary, is a scrupulous and upstanding paediatrician, who always puts the health of his patients over profit and money, often contravening the rules of the private clinic where he works. The brothers meet once a month with their wives for fine dining in expensive restaurants, but when an unexpected situation involving their teenage kids arises, their consciences are questioned and their usual dinner conversation takes an unexpected turn.

An ordinary guy suddenly finds he has superpowers he can use to help his spirited daughter and the people around them, but he also runs into trouble in the process.

A debt collector who looks intimidating, but actually has a warm heart, ends up becoming the guardian of a child, who has been left behind as collateral by her illegal immigrant mother.

When a pharmaceutical company's illegal experiments inadvertently create a zombie, the strange Park family finds it and tries to profit from it.

Kim Ji-young, an ordinary woman in her 30s, suddenly shows signs of being inhabited by other women from her life, past and present.

A shady cop finds himself in over his head when he gets caught between Internal Affairs and the city’s corrupt mayor.

Seo-jin is a widower still grieving his wife's death. Then he receives the news that his long-lost younger sister, Yoo-jin, who went missing 25 years ago, has turned up. Unlike the rest of his family, who welcome her into their arms, Seo-jin feels that Yoo-jin is a stranger.

Former teen idol Nam Hyeon-soo is now in his thirties and working as a radio DJ. One day a young woman named Jeong-nam shows up and claims to be his own daughter. She also has a son whom she claims to be Hyeon-soo's grandson. Their relation is proven via DNA tests by Hyeon-soo's brother. This leads to Hyeon-soo attempting to avoid a scandal concerning him having children "unknown" to the media.

A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.

With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.

Two friends, Jung Jong-suk and Hwang Kyung-min, meet after several years and talk about their time in school, which left them scarred.

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

A disgruntled henchman teams up with an ambitious prosecutor to bring down a leading presidential candidate and the news editor behind him who is truly pulling the strings.

A working class family wins a free vacation to Hawaii. But when their plane takes flight, it gets hijacked by terrorists. To save her family and the other passengers, the wife must reveal her secret past and fight back.

Don Poli, the patriarch of a family embedded in politics, faces the change of party in his state - after a hundred years in power - losing all his privileges. Humiliated and angry, he threatens to disinherit his family and leave to rebuild his life. This forces his children (Kippy, Ramses and Belén) to take extreme measures to ensure their future, causing everything that could go wrong to turn out worse.

An undercover cop has his loyalties tested when the boss of the corporate gang he's spent years infiltrating dies.

An honest cop has to compromise with his principles when he is told to find a scapegoat for a high-profile serial killer case in exchange for a big promotion.

At work, she's a renowned assassin. At home, she's a single mom to a teenage daughter. Killing? That's easy. It's parenting that's the hard part.

An evil spirit that changes faces infiltrates one family placing one brother in danger while the other tries to save him.

Deliveryman Jong-su is out on a job when he runs into Hae-mi, a girl who once lived in his neighborhood. She asks if he'd mind looking after her cat while she's away on a trip to Africa. On her return, she introduces to Jong-su an enigmatic young man named Ben, who she met during her trip. One day Ben tells Jong-su about his most unusual hobby.

Gang-pae is #2 gangster in his organization who longs to become an actor. Su-ta is a superstar actor who takes on the role of a gangster in an action movie called Rough Cut. When another actor leaves the set due to Su-tas violent ways, the production is on the verge of shutting down. Su-ta asks Gang-pae, whom he met by chance, to play alongside him in the movie in order to save the production.

The suicide of a former high-school bully puts the boy's father on a quest for answers.

Bok-Soon runs a street stall, cares for her younger sister, and is feared by many because of her quick temper. When Tae-Soo murders her sister, rage consumes her completely as she stalks the killer.

A wife, overwhelmed with hatred for her husband, inflicts an unspeakable wound on their son, as the family heads towards horrific destruction.

A contract killer becomes disenchanted with his line of work and spares the lives of his two latest would-be-victims. But the assassination company he works for has no intentions of letting him quit.

Jong-dae and Yong-ki make a living by picking up paper and empty bottles. Both then join different gangster clan and becomes involved in a struggle of political interests over development in Gangnam, Seoul.

To nab a sales manager who's at large after murdering his family, a detective investigates the man's colleagues, who seem to be hiding something.

Forensic pathologist Kang is assigned to examine the dismembered corpse of a female murder victim. Detective Min points to a fanatic environmentalist, Lee Sung-ho, as the primary suspect. But when Kang’s daughter is kidnapped, a manipulative game begins between Kang and Lee, who holds secrets about the homicide case.

After barely surviving a brutal attack by a sadistic serial killer, crime boss Jang Dong-su is left humiliated. Determined to catch the killer known as K, he forms an uneasy alliance with Jung Tae-seok, a relentless and incorruptible detective who often disrupts his illegal business. However, while Jang Dong-su wants K dead, Jung Tae-suk is determined to bring him to justice. With a deal in place—whoever finds K first will decide his fate—the hunt begins, blurring the lines between crime and law.

The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.

Though it places his own life in danger, a look-alike commoner secretly takes the place of a poisoned king to save his country from falling into chaos.

After being kidnapped as a small child and raised by the five men who abducted him, a teenage boy is now forced to join their life in crime.

Ma Chenggang, a wealthy man in Xihong City, worries that his eldest son is too spoiled to succeed him. Determined to raise a capable successor, he takes an unconventional approach. They conceal their wealth, moving the family to a dilapidated neighborhood, and maintain an illusion of poverty, so that his son could develop qualities such as hard work, knowledge, careful budgeting, physical fitness, and perseverance.

After tracing the origin of a disturbing supernatural affliction to a wealthy family's ancestral gravesite, a team of paranormal experts relocates the remains—and soon discovers what happens to those who dare to mess with the wrong grave.

Shin-ae moves to her recently late husband’s hometown. Despite her efforts to settle in this unfamiliar and too-normal place, she finds that she can’t fit in. After a sudden tragedy, Shin-ae turns to Christianity to relieve her pain, but when even this is not permitted, she wages a war against God.

A case of the flu quickly morphs into a pandemic. As the death toll mounts and the living panic, the government plans extreme measures to contain it.

The lives of 4 interconnected South Koreans - a married couple, a novelist the wife is having an affair with, and a second woman the novelist is simultaneously involved with.

A young Korean man surpasses his difficult childhood by becoming a powerful prosecutor, but soon learns that real power comes at a price.

Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il's birthday) celebration. While North Korean government wanted a propaganda film, the director kept on filming between the scripted scenes. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal.

A wily safecracker is forced to help a mob boss pull off a $150 million heist, but smells a double-cross in the works.

Kyung-min lives alone in a one-room apartment. One day, she finds traces of a stranger breaking into her room and soon a mysterious murder case begins to unravel.

A serial killer murders a girl from his neighborhood. The residents begin to suspect him one by one, as he tries to cover his tracks and plans another kill before escape.

A fishing-boat crew takes on a dangerous commission to smuggle a group of illegal immigrants from China to Korea.

A Korean horror film about an adopted young boy with a strange link to an old, dead acacia tree. As the boy settles in to his new home, the tree comes to life. When the family who adopted him becomes pregnant, he is to go back to the orphanage, and horror ensues.

Jang Tae-Young is a popular trouble shooter in the criminal world. He is cold and ambitious. He dreams of building a casino hotel one day. A reporter then goes to Jang Tae-Young.

Returning home and finding his town drastically changed, a former soldier falls in with gangsters.

A quartet of disaffected Korean youths have robbed a Seoul gas station. After taking the gas station over, their wacky antics ensue; forcing the manager to sing, kidnapping customers that complain about the service, and staging fist-fights between street gang members and gas station employees; all of these reflect their own gripes against society.

An exceptionally talented face reader becomes entangled in a bloody power struggle between a child king and his uncle who plans to usurp the throne.

A deaf man and his girlfriend resort to desperate measures in order to fund a kidney transplant for his sister. Things go horribly wrong, and the situation spirals rapidly into a cycle of violence and revenge.

Sometime in the future, mankind has depleted all energy and fuel sources, however they have engineered a way to use human excrement as fuel. To reward production, the government hands out extremely addictive, popsicle-like "Juicybars", which in turn also act as a laxative. Aachi and Ssipak are street hoodlums who struggle to survive by trading these bars in the black market.

"Innocent face, D-cup breasts and perfect intercourse skills! Son, this is not your girlfriend anymore but your mother!" Ki-ho brings Yuki from Japan to marry her. However, he starts cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend in Korea. Min-cheol comforted Yuki and thought of her as his daughter-in-law, but one day he realizes he is looking at her as a woman. In the end, Yuki and Min-cheol have intercourse without Ki-ho knowing...

A stranger arrives in a little village and soon after a mysterious sickness starts spreading. A policeman is drawn into the incident and is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.

From a mountain peak in South Korea, a man plummets to his death. Did he jump, or was he pushed? When detective Hae-joon arrives on the scene, he begins to suspect the dead man’s wife Seo-rae. But as he digs deeper into the investigation, he finds himself trapped in a web of deception and desire.

During the 1970s, in Kunchon, there were women divers who were able to dive without equipment, including two best friends Choon-ja and Jin-sook, Jin-sook's brother and Hammer. They always collected seafood under water for living. But, as fewer factories started to be built near the beach, the women divers started to have trouble with what they were doing for living. Without any choice, the ship crews decided to join the smuggling business in the water to seek a way for their living. But the smuggling business in their village got too big for Jin-sook's family to handle and the peaceful village was gradually broken.

A drug squad attempts to take down a criminal organization and they must go undercover to do so, so they begin working at a chicken restaurant, that becomes famous for its delicious chicken. Due to the unexpected popularity, the detectives find themselves in a situation they never expected.

Hyun-su and Soo-jin are newlyweds. Seemingly out of nowhere, he starts talking in his sleep. "Someone's inside." From that night on, whenever he falls asleep, he transforms into someone else with no recollection of what happened the night before. Soo-jin is overwhelmed with anxiety that he'd hurt her family while she sleeps and can barely sleep a wink because of this irrational fear. Despite sleep treatment, Hyun-su’s sleepwalking only intensifies, and she begins to feel that her unborn child may be in danger…

A timid and extravagant bank clerk, Dae-ho is considered inefficient at his workplace. As he tries to be recognized by his superior, his efforts only cause more bad situations. But he has an explosive energy that nobody knows about. One day, after yet another day of suffering at work, he goes to a wrestling gym to persuade its owner to become his bank’s client. And, by accident, he starts to learn how to wrestle. From then, he starts to live a new life. And his personality starts to change…

An idealistic policeman must bring down his estranged older brother, now a powerful gangster in a South Korean port city.

At his mother's 70th birthday party, Yong-nam runs into Eui-joo, who rejected him in college. When the city is engulfed in toxic gas from a terrorist attack, the two must find a way to escape using all the techniques they learned in their college rock climbing club.

In this radical and endearing black comedy, a group of retrenched female factory workers decide to pool their compensation money… and hire a hit man to liquidate their boss.

The assistant of a wealthy socialite reveals her husband's salacious affair. The fallout entangles him in a web of sex, love and deceit that could threaten his life and career.

Two clowns living in Korea's Chosun Dynasty get arrested for staging a play that satirizes the king. They are dragged to the palace and threatened with execution but are given a chance to save their lives if they can make the king laugh.

Min-jae, a rookie police officer with a natural born talent for driving, is assigned to the perfect team: the Hit-and-Run Squad. But at the same time, for police detective Si-yeon, it is a place she is unjustly demoted to for doing her job. The two team up to arrest the rich and powerful speed maniac Jae-chul who is suspected of committing crimes for his obsession for speed.

Street vendor Denilson's life changes when his father dies and leaves him his entire legacy. Along with the fortune, however, Denilson also inherits the family that will do everything to get their hands on this inheritance.

A failing webtoon artist finds he's drawn a target on his own back after publishing a story containing real secrets from his former life as a superspy.

A horror webtoon writer journeys to a shabby apartment building in search of ideas. The building's caretaker tells him about multiple strange events that happened throughout the building's history.

A young assassin is sent to kill a retired mob boss. But things get complicated when she begins to like him.

A corrupt customs official joins forces with a vicious gangster to form the most powerful crime partnership in Busan.

Amanzio Rastelli appointed several of his relations to managerial positions in his firm. They decided to think internationally and now business is heavily in debt. Luckily for the Rastellis, Bolta the accountant uses all the tricks of his art to cook the books, but catastrophe awaits.

After moving into a new house, a young girl begins displaying strange and disturbing behavior until, one day, she disappears behind a closet. While the devastated father is left with no clue about his daughter's disappearance, an exorcist shows up to help.
