Parasite ends pretty bleakley. We watch as Ki Taek takes the place of the housekeeper's husband in the basement, this time hiding out from the police. The Parks leave the house and another family moves in but the story remains the same. A rich family on top, a poor family serving them, and the poorer still left scavenging for scraps.
Though we feel an ounce of hope when Ki Woo promises to work hard enough to buy the house one day himself, freeing his father, the fantasy scene we see in the end cuts back to Ki Woo in a half basement, stuck in the shadows. The audience knows he will never buy that house.
According to Bong, he had intended to end the movie with a "surefire kill". The filmmaking technique means that you fire an extra shot to make sure someone is really dead. Like when you're watching an action movie and someone shoots an antagonist and then fires a final shot at him while he stands over him, even though the audience can guess that the character was dead before that.
Bong told Vulture, "Maybe if the movie ended where they hug and fades out, the audience can imagine, ‘Oh, it’s impossible to buy that house,’ but the camera goes down to that half-basement. It’s quite cruel and sad, but I thought it was being real and honest with the audience. You know and I know — we all know that this kid isn’t going to be able to buy that house. I just felt that frankness was right for the film, even though it’s sad.”
Cruelty is a common theme throughout the movie but it's felt most strongly at the end, and it's a big part of what compels Ki Taek to kill. In an interview with GQ, Bong said that, more than anything else, Dong Ik's cruelty towards the housekeeper's husband in regards his smell is Ki Taek's big trigger to kill Mr. Park.
"Because of the smell of this man, Mr. Park holds his nose, and I remember telling the actors to look at the man like he’s this stinky bag of food trash, and that's very cruel," Bong said. "And Mr. Park's reaction has to be that intense for it to act as a trigger for Ki Taek."
Parasite is streaming now on Hulu.
