IMAX is getting a Parasite

Say it with us: “Parasite, only IMAX, Nationwide Chicago.” Okay, it doesn’t have the same ring as Ki Jung’s delightful pneumonic device from Bong Joon Ho’s masterful Best Picture winner Parasite. However, the movie is coming to IMAX theaters nationwide next month to celebrate the film’s historic Oscar win, and we can’t think of a better way to get the word out. Now, if NEON really wanted people to go to this thing, they’d also screen the footage of Bong making two Oscar statues kiss in IMAX.

For those who haven’t spent time in the basement (or the walls of the basement), Parasite is a Hitchcockian, upstairs-downstairs class satire about a family of hucksters scamming their way into the home of a wealthy family. But the more time they spend under the guise of servitude, the secrets inside the wealthy family’s dream home break its calm, minimalist facade. It’s an unpredictable ride that The A.V. Club called the third best of 2019. For our year-end wrap-up, A.V. Club writer Jesse Hassenger summed it up without spoiling the surprise: “Its genius lies in the way it zigzags around some genres and zips straight through others; this is a con-artist movie and a farce, a family drama, and, yes, a horror movie of sorts, even if it’s not a creature feature,” he wrote. “Despite the movie’s eclecticism, Bong’s hairpin turns are executed with sleek precision, never dropping focus from how this family will do what they can to spend some time above ground, heads above water, inside the wealthy host home where they’ve insinuated themselves.”

Parasite opens in IMAX theaters nationwide on February 7.