From tales of revenge and love to compelling stories that truly make you think, here is just a sampling of what Korean cinema has to offer. But whether you're in the mood for a poignant, tear-jerking watch or an exciting thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat, there's plenty on this list for anyone to enjoy, including dramas, comedies, horror films - and yes - even zombie movies.
These remarkable films span a variety of different genres, and include more must-watch masterpieces from Parasite's director Bong Joon Ho as well as critically-acclaimed flicks from other prominent Korean directors. Luckily, if you're looking for more great films to watch after Parasite, we've rounded up some of the best Korean movies you can watch to delve deeper into the truly amazing world of Korean cinema. But even beyond this highly-acclaimed 2019 movie, there's no doubt that South Korean cinema has long established itself as a fantastic contender in filmmaking, steadily drawing an expanding global audience with its many highly-rated flicks that range from stirring drama films to mind-bending thriller and action movies. It is a classic tale of crime, sex, ambition and love.By now you've probably watched - or at least heard of - Parasite, the Korean film that recently made history with its four-time win at the 2020 Academy Awards (including a win for Best Picture!). The exquisitely beautiful Kim Min-hee is excellent as the heiress with all her gamine innocence, petulance and entitlement, and Kim Tae-ri is superb as the handmaiden herself: smart, worldly, talented in the ways of deceit and yet with an unsuspected streak of romance.
But things go terribly wrong, and there is an unforgettable whiplash plot twist which sends us all the way back to the beginning of the story. The plan is that she will assist his sinister plan to seduce this heiress, elope with her and then have her incarcerated in a lunatic asylum – in return for which the “handmaiden” is promised a few jewels. In Japanese-ruled colonial Korea of the 1930s, a con-man posing as a nobleman persuades a pickpocket of his lowlife acquaintance to get a job as a handmaiden to a beautiful, wealthy young woman, who is being exploited by her hideous old father. It is a film to compare with Hitchcock’s Rebecca or Nagisa Oshima’s In The Realm of the Senses. Park Chan-wook, a veteran of extreme cinema with his “Vengeance” trilogy (Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance) in 2016 created a glorious erotic suspense thriller in The Handmaiden, a sumptuously designed period drama based on Sarah Waters’s novel Fingersmith.
Veteran player Song Kang-ho – who has become the face of Korean cinema - projects such pathos and even gentleness in his muddle-headed need to do the right thing by his family. Korean Wave (Hallyu) refers to the rise of South Koreas cultural economy and popularity of Korean pop culture, entertainment, music, TV dramas and movies. The film has a crazy and exuberant theatricality, with broad streaks of farce, and also a strong if unexpected element of sympathy. Parasite is about the perennial topic of class and 21st-century servitude, and it is about the fundamental issue of inequality. Cunningly, he gets his elder sister in as an “art tutor” to the kid brother of this wealthy household, and it isn’t long before mum and dad have scammed jobs there also as chauffeur and housekeeper, all pretending to be not related, brilliantly playing on their rich employers’ smugness, fastidiousness and cocooned naivety. The teenage son flukes a plum job as an after-school tutor to a teenage girl who lives in a colossal modernist mansion. Bong Joon-ho’s upstairs-downstairs satirical masterpiece Parasite, the Palme D’Or and best picture Oscar-winner features a low-achieving family living cheek-by-jowl in a scuzzy, stinky basement flat.