Now a days vampires have become stale, samsie and not at all frightening, instead turning into more cute and cuddly creatures than things we should be afraid of in the dark. What happened to these once ferocious beasts? Over the years the vampire franchise – especially in horror – lost it’s way a little, but if you’d like a fresh injection of blood then South Korean director Park Chan-wook‘s very cool and exciting take on vampires is a must watch this Halloween!
Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) is a kind hearted Catholic priest who wants to help people. He volunteers at the hospital, providing care and comfort to patients, but while his faith is strong, his methods are a little unusual. He’s desperate to help people and decides to take part in a controversial experiment to help find a vaccine to a deadly virus. Sang-hyun gets infected and passes away, only to be saved by a blood transfusion. The only one out of 500 volunteers, Sang-hyun is looked upon as a miracle and soon develops an obsessed group from his parish, who believe he has the ability to heal the sick. Things aren’t as they seem though, and that becomes apparent when the priest’s old sickness starts coming back. He can’t explain it, but his sudden thirst for blood seems to be the answer to all his questions. Amongst all this Sang-hyun comes across his old childhood friend, Kang-woo (Shin ha-kyun) and he’s invited to join their weekly mahjong game. There he begins to feel attracted to Kang-woo’s wife, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin). With a whole host of new urges and needs, and a dangerous growing attraction to Tae-ju, Sang-hyun must figure out a way to control this new aspect of his life, or find a way of learning to live with it.
Thirst is a great film that blends so many genres that you find yourself forgetting what sort of film you’re actually watching, but that doesn’t matter in it’s near 130 minute run time as you happily watch the film play out in it’s unique and game-changing manner.
While the horror as we’d know is fairly light, mainly because we’re never frightened of our protagonist, instead feeling sorry for him and ultimately routing for him, it’s the horror of his situation that we go through. Seeing some of the actions he has to take to try and continue to survive and not go through the quite grotesque disease from the beginning of the film. It’s a charming story that blends horror, thriller, drama, romance and even comedy in small doses. Chan-wook is ambitious in his idea of telling this vampire tale from an unusual perspective, but one that pays off for the great director. The film is filled with passion between our two leads and they embark on a dangerous affair, leaving you genuinely unsure who is at risk, Sang-hyun or Tae-ju – who is played quite wonderfully by Ok-bin as the unhinged, erratic, tormented wife.
Vampires are doing well right now, back on top of the world after a dip in recent years, but films such as Twilight and shows such as True Blood have camped them up a little, and not in the cool fun punk-rock ways of the 80’s but rather the soft, caring “we’ve all got souls and aren’t we lovely” sort of nauseating way. Thirst somehow manages to take everything which makes vampires popular right now, but not make it annoying, not overbearing or cringey, but instead just delivering a fascinating and entertaining take that really offers us a new option, something truly different.
Rating: Thirst has a real bite with some truly wonderful and weird moments (7/10)
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