Thirst - Park Chan-wook

When Oldboy was released it was a cultural phenomenon for movie lovers my age. Set as a part of Park's 'vengeance trilogy' Oldboy is the story of Oh Dae-Su's search to find out why a man has trapped him in a prison-like hotel room for 15 years. After that time he is released into the word like a rat in a maze until his captor's game reaches its completion. It's everything that Quentin Tarantino wishes his movies were, and more. It's violence is guttural, exciting and unique (check out the famous and awesome hammer fight that was done in a single shot) and the torture scenes are brutal but not without purpose. It also has probably one of the best 'twist endings' I've ever seen in a movie (as long as it's not spoiled for you or you think too hard about what the twist is). If you can stand violence I would heartily recommend it, as it's probably the best 'violent movie' of the decade.

When it was released many people felt the same way about Oldboy as I do so you can imagine the anticipation when it was announced that the same director would release a vampire movie. If anything I knew it wasn't going to be another vampire story high on romance and low on teeth and in this aspect I was not disappointed. Thirst is every bit as brutal as Oldboy, even if it is a little slower and less exciting.

Thirst tells the story of a self-flagellating priest who hates himself and life to the point where he volunteers for a medical experiment that has a 0 percent success rate. He volunteers to be infected with a leprosy-type virus so that researchers can try to find a cure. Predictably he cannot fight off the infection, and seemingly dies as he's being treated. However as a complication from his treatment, it seems that he was injected with a bag of vampire blood (from where? who knows?) and thus his transformation starts. Typing all this out the setup seems a bit clumsy, but while you're watching the film it's easy to go along with it. The priest soon finds out what he has become, and he begins to thirst for human desires much more than he ever has.

During his initial discovery and transformation, Thirst is pretty entertaining and novel. The audience is pretty unsure where this vampire lies within the vampire canon, and it's fun to discover one scene at a time, which cliches will be used here and which won't be. He's damaged by sunlight but we're not sure what else. He has super-human abilities that come directly after drinking blood, but there are also a few clever scenes in which we are assured that yes, he still has a reflection. The best parts of Thirst come when both the audience and the priest is finding out what his new powers are, and where his limitations lie.

However once Thirst starts to develop its plot and progress towards the climax, it becomes pretty much Park's standard fare. The priest develops an unstoppable lust towards a friend's wife, and she is enamored with him both because of his strange magnetism and because of her awful home life. Kim Ok-bin is pretty great in playing the love interest and the faces she makes early on garner some of the strongest laughs of the film. However after she becomes interested in his vampirism the film takes a turn towards the south.

Like Park's other films, Thirst eventually exists mostly as a morality tale and a story of revenge. The priest's actions eventually leave a trail of death (some not solely on his hands) that eventually catches up with him. Park is obsessed with violence and sex and their consequences, and he uses Thirst to again explore this fixation.

Thirst doesn't completely lose its footing once the plot because a little more standard, there are still some interesting ideas found throughout the film. I thought it was particularly clever to have the vampire virus amplify the desires and vices of those it infects, rather than make anyone who gets it a blood sucking demon. Because the priest was always a do-gooder and someone who denied himself bodily wants, he tends to be somewhat of a thoughtful vampire and tries not to kill to feed himself. However another character who is infected eventually becomes bloodthirsty and downright evil. I liked the idea that the virus affected everyone differently, even if we didn't get a lot of test cases for this theory.

Thirst does have a place in today's cinema, but I'm not sure if it's really worth going out of your way to see it (which you would likely have to do). It's often very beautifully shot, I think it makes a good counterpoint to the relatively safe and romantic vampires currently in vogue (Twilight, True Blood), and be assured, no vampires in Thirst sparkle. However the movie drags on a little bit at 130 minutes, and it seems not to know where it's going until it decides to be a straight up morality tale. Park's other efforts never reach the pinnacle that Oldboy did, and I worry that he may be a filmmaker that only has one great film in him, and a bunch of mediocre ones.