The Academy sometimes gets criticized for making safe choices during their annual telecast. But if you surf the nominations in the Best Picture category from the past few years, you will actually see some bold choices, and risky winners, that go against the grain. A black-and-white silent movie took home Best Picture in 2011 with THE ARTIST. The French tragedy AMOUR earned a nomination in 2012, and the Mexican feature ROMA contended for the night’s top prize just last year.
It’s believed that the same openness to outside-the-box feature films could extend over to this year’s race and sweep up Bong Joon-ho’s outstanding PARASITE, which is coming to theatres beginning on October 18.
Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE is a South Korean thriller that comments on class distinctions and the rich-versus-poor dynamic, in a similar fashion to his sci-fi masterpiece SNOWPIERCER. But the story in PARASITE is far more grounded and believable, even though audiences really have no clue which direction the movie is going to go.
Already, the call is out from the Oscar® trackers for PARASITE to compete in multiple Academy Awards® categories. It is believed that the movie — which currently enjoys a 100 percent Fresh grade on Rotten Tomatoes with 128 reviews filed — is a lock for the Foreign Language Oscar category. But thanks to the success of recent movies like AMOUR and ROMA, pundits are dreaming even bigger for PARASITE.
“There’s absolutely no reason to count out a Best Picture win either,” writes Katey Rich for Vanity Fair. “ROMA or not, the Academy has only become more international in its membership in recent years — and with no Best Picture front-runner yet emerging in the waning days of TIFF, why not bet on the year’s biggest festival success?”
Neon will back the Oscar campaign for PARASITE. The studio had awards success recently with Margot Robbie and I, TONYA. An understanding of the marathon that is Oscar campaigning can only help Neon and the movie’s chances. But next, we will see how audiences respond to Bong Joon-ho’s social commentary in PARASITE. Our only advice is to go into the theatre knowing as little as possible about the plot, because the director has some jaw-dropping surprises up his sleeve, and you will be thinking about PARASITE and its reveals for weeks to follow.
Look for PARASITE in an AMC near you starting on October 18.
