Movies Like
Movies Like Parasite Worth the Subtitles
By Jordan A. · · 5 min read
Parasite won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019 on a unanimous jury vote, then went to the Oscars and won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature. It was the first film not in English to take Best Picture in the Academy's history. Bong Joon Ho wrote it with Han Jin-won, and the cast is led by Song Kang-ho, who had already been in four of Bong's films.
What people actually respond to is the turn. For roughly an hour it's a con artist comedy, and it's genuinely funny. Then a doorbell rings in the rain and the film becomes something else entirely, and it never goes back. That switch is the thing worth chasing, and it's rarer than the "movies like Parasite" lists usually admit.
So this list is organized around what actually transfers: Bong's own filmography first, then Korean films that share his nerve, then films from elsewhere that pull the same class satire trick. Most are subtitled. That is the point, and Bong said as much when he accepted the Golden Globe, telling the room that a one inch barrier of subtitles was worth getting over.
More Bong Joon Ho
Memories of Murder (2003) is the one to watch next, no argument. Song Kang-ho plays a rural detective investigating the Hwaseong killings, Korea's first confirmed serial murders, which ran from 1986 to 1991 and were unsolved when the film came out. Police finally identified Lee Choon-jae in September 2019, sixteen years after release, which gives the ending a strange second life. It's very funny for a film about incompetence and torture, which is the Bong signature. As of August 2026 it isn't on a US subscription service, so you'll be renting.
Mother (2009) premiered at Cannes in Un Certain Regard and stars Kim Hye-ja, then best known in Korea for playing warm television mothers, as a widow trying to clear her son of a murder charge. She is terrifying in it. The film shares Parasite's interest in what people will do for family and how quickly that curdles. It was Korea's Oscar submission that year. If you want the version of Bong with no genre armor at all, this is it.
Snowpiercer (2013) is Parasite's basement staircase turned sideways into a train. Adapted from the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, it puts Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho and Tilda Swinton on a locomotive circling a frozen earth with the poor in the tail and the rich up front. Harvey Weinstein demanded twenty five minutes of cuts and a voiceover ending; Bong refused and won, and the version you can watch is his. The class metaphor is much less subtle here, which is either refreshing or heavy handed.
The rest of the Korean new wave
The Handmaiden (2016) is Park Chan-wook adapting Sarah Waters's novel Fingersmith and moving it from Victorian Britain to Korea under Japanese occupation in the 1930s. Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri play a noblewoman and the maid sent to swindle her. It won the BAFTA for best film not in English. Structurally it does what Parasite does, showing you a con and then rewinding to show what was really happening. It is also explicit and violent in ways Parasite is not, so know that going in.
Burning (2018) is Lee Chang-dong's adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story, with Yoo Ah-in as a broke aspiring writer and Steven Yeun as the wealthy, unreadable man who takes an interest in the same woman. It won the FIPRESCI critics prize at Cannes and became the first Korean film to reach the final nine on the Oscar international shortlist. It's slower than Parasite by a wide margin and it never confirms what happened. That ambiguity is either the reward or the frustration.
Class satire from elsewhere
Shoplifters (2018) won the Palme d'Or the year before Parasite did and was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film. Hirokazu Kore-eda follows a Tokyo family scraping by on petty theft and pension fraud who take in a neglected child. It shares Parasite's central question, which is whether a family built out of need counts as a family, and it answers with far more tenderness and far less blood. The last twenty minutes rearrange everything you thought the film was doing, quietly, without a single raised voice. It's on Netflix and Prime Video as of August 2026.
Sorry to Bother You (2018) is Boots Riley's directing debut, premiered at Sundance, and stars LaKeith Stanfield as an Oakland telemarketer who starts using a "white voice" and gets promoted straight into something monstrous. Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun and Armie Hammer round it out. Like Parasite it starts as workplace comedy and takes a hard turn you will not see coming. The last act is much stranger than anything in Bong's film, and some viewers think it goes too far.
Triangle of Sadness (2022) is Ruben Ostlund's English language debut, and it won the Palme d'Or with an eight minute standing ovation before landing three Oscar nominations including Best Picture. It runs in three parts: fashion models, a luxury yacht, and an island where the cleaning staff ends up in charge. Woody Harrelson plays a Marxist captain. The yacht sequence is the most disgusting thing in any of these films, and the satire is much blunter than Bong's, which is a real trade off.
How to pick tonight
If you want more Bong specifically, Memories of Murder. If you want the tonal switch, Sorry to Bother You gets there fastest and Burning gets there slowest. If you want to be moved rather than jolted, Shoplifters. Save Triangle of Sadness for a night when you're in the mood to laugh at rich people and don't mind a mess.
If you'd rather not scroll for an hour, our movie recommendation tool will take a few films you already rate and build a shortlist from there.
Topics covered: parasite, thriller, foreign, class, bong-joon-ho, korean-cinema, memories-of-murder, shoplifters
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.