Parasite begins as a dark comedy about the Kim family scamming their way into jobs with the Parks. Midway through, it discovers a secret in the Parks' basement that turns the film into thriller and then horror. The genre shifts mirror its argument: class systems hide violence beneath their polished surfaces.

Bong controls tone with surgical precision. The comedy makes us complicit — we laugh at the Kims' ingenuity — before the film reveals that the situation we found entertaining is actually devastating. The shift from laughter to horror is the audience watching its own class assumptions get exposed.