Emily in Parasite is the Instagram mashup you didn't know you needed

You winced through Lily Collins’s attempts at French and her character Emily Cooper’s pain au chocolat scene had you hiding behind your pillow.

The only thing scarier than a second season of Emily selfie-ing her way through Paris on Netflix? Emily selfie-ing her way through the (rather less manicured) streets of Seongbuk-dong in South Korea, the setting of last year’s film Parasite, about a family that folds pizza boxes for a living. It’s the mash-up no one expected. Search @emilyinparasite on Instagram, if you dare (more than 7,000 people have already followed in the week since the account was set up).

The satirical account might not beat the official @emilyinparis in followers but it certainly wins for sheer inventiveness. The first post of the Instagram-imagined Emily in South Korea is a mocked-up selfie announcing: “I’m here!!!” next to character Kim Ki-woo as he crouches by the toilet, the only place he can steal phone signal. It has already racked up more than 3,000 likes. Emily would approve.

Which genius is behind the account? Acupuncturist Russell Brown and creative director Mark Jacobs, who say the juxtaposition of Emily’s ignorance with the horrors of Korean poverty is the “dumbest” thing they’ve made, but that’s exactly the point.

“It’s very Emily to impose her American perspective on a film about Korean class horror,” they told Entertainment Weekly. “It started as a text that made us laugh and became an Instagram account to supplement our doom-scrolling.”

@emilyinparasite has taken fans on a rollercoaster: Emily posing with a pastry in the back seat of driver Ki-taek’s car; Emily hoping the shower works at her new Korean pad (“#callgabriel”); Emily admiring her pretend host family’s son’s artwork like it’s a piece from the Musée d’Orsay.

“Thursday feels!!” she writes next to a particularly insufferable selfie, her pink lipstick in contrast to the grey-faced cast cowering behind her. If she thought the Parisians were unwelcoming, at least they were obliging enough to smile for the camera.

Brown and Jacobs think their clever Instagram handle would make a good drag name. “A White American abroad working at a marketing firm, trying to succeed as an influencer, as wish-fulfillment princess fantasy is also horror,” they write. “It’s all horror.”

Scarier still, their Paris-Parasite mashup comes just in time for Halloween: Eiffel Tower charms and pizza boxes at the ready. Bring on the Netflix series.