On the formal argument in Parasite (2019) about what cinema owes its audience in terms of revelation.

Parasite is structured in two halves that are tonally different but formally continuous. The first half is a comedy of class aspiration: it's fun, it's clever, it's satisfying. The second half is something else.

Bong Joon-ho has talked about wanting the second half to feel like a genre switch that wasn't signaled. The audience who arrived expecting the film the first half promised gets something they didn't sign up for, and that formal betrayal is part of the film's argument: what you expected was a fantasy, and what you got is how things actually work.

But the formal betrayal also works because the second half isn't a different film. It's a continuation of the same logic, followed to consequences the first half couldn't contain. The comedy of class aspiration and the tragedy of class violence are not different subjects. They are the same subject at different temperatures.

What the film owes its audience is completion: it has to follow its own logic wherever it leads, even if the destination is uncomfortable. Parasite's commitment to following its logic to its conclusion is what distinguishes it from films that use class as texture rather than subject.