Critic’s Choice: If you liked ‘Parasite,’ don’t miss ‘The Housemaid’

“Parasite,� the endlessly surprising new movie from South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, is a critics’ darling and an art-house smash. It is also a class-conscious thriller with many classic influences, including Joseph Losey’s “The Servant,� Claude Chabrol’s “La Cérémonie� and, perhaps most of all, Kim Ki-young’s ferociously entertaining 1960 drama, “The Housemaid,“ which will screen Sunday in 35-millimeter at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown.

Often regarded as one of the top two or three Korean movies of all time, “The Housemaid� follows a domestic liaison that blooms into a fatal attraction. (No bunnies are boiled, but watch out for rat poison.) Lee Eun-shim gives a startling performance — and forever branded herself as a villain in the eyes of the Korean moviegoing public — as a sexually rapacious young housemaid who has an affair with her employer (Kim Jin-kyu), a composer with a pregnant wife and two kids. Tense, elegant and rich in claustrophobic menace, “The Housemaid� proved endlessly influential and was even remade in 2010, to glossy but inferior effect. As the title character herself might have declared: Accept no substitutes.