I kind of wish I had seen this before Parasite but now's as good as ever.Gang-doo (Song Kang-ho) is kind of a loser, scrimping coins from his dad's convenience store truck. His middle school daughter Se-jin (Lee Jae-eung) doesn't want to be seen with him. But when a mutated river monster erupts from the Han River and drags her away, Gang-doo must rally his entire family to band together and get her back.
As with Parasite, this is less about the monster and more about bureaucratic incompetence, outright malice, and indifference. No one believes Gang-doo when he claims his daughter is alive and corrupt officials abound to take advantage of the chaos. The family is truly on their own, avoiding capture by their government while trying not to get eaten by a literal monster.
I'm not going to lie, this ends pretty bleakly. No spoilers, just an FYI. You need to be in a really upbeat mood to watch this so you're not coming down too low. Otherwise, this is another Bong Joon-ho masterpiece. Every member of the Park family is flawed but fully-realized in a way that makes beautiful sense at the climax. As dark as it is, there is an undeniable grandeur to it as these ordinary people transcend themselves to come together as a family.
It's currently streaming on Tubi but I don't know for how much longer. It's also on Criterion and Amazon Prime.
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