THIRST
Sub-Genre- Vampires
In Attendance- Me, Machine, and Mrs. Machine.
Cast Members of Note- Kang-ho Song, Ok-vin Kim, Hae-Sook Kim, and Ha-Kyun Shin. Directed by Chan-Wook Park.
What's it About?- A Korean priest, bored of his routine of saying prayers and hugging altar boys, decides to volunteer himself as a guinea pig to find a cure for a mysterious, killer virus. What a sweet guy, wanting to save lives and end the suffering he sees all around him, risking death to help the cold world find some warmth... EMO ALERT! That's right, go write a poem about it, father weepy!
The virus makes him break out in nasty sores and kills him, kinda-sorta, but then suddenly he's alive again, a true miracle of science. Either that, or he received some vampire blood during a transfusion, and is now one of the living dead! When he takes up with his mentally retarded cousin's slutty wife, and I mean really slutty wife, they embark on an affair full of sordid sex, armpit licking, guilt, and blood.
Can a vampire priest exist harmoniously with god and nature? Will his taking up with a whore lead to ruin for all? Don't priest know that they can't have sex or kill? I won't spoil what happens next here, because doing so would mean that I understood it all, but suffice it to say that being a vampire isn't as fun as True Blood makes it out to be, though it does have its perks.
The Good- This isn't the vampire opus that I was expecting, but it is fresh and daring, and a really good movie that at least tried something different. Don't get me wrong, it's still plenty bloody, brutal, sexy and even full of wry humor, it just leaned more on character development and a slow build than most vamp flicks tend to.
Chan-Wook Park is a fantastic director; if you haven't seen Oldboy yet, you're missing an awesome movie. He does a great job here as well, although he gets a little too philosophically deep which detracts from the pace/plot a bit, and creates an interesting, nasty, whimsical and intelligent vampire flick.
The Bad- 133 minutes was a tad too long. It didn't drag per se, but it took a while to get going, and I think trimming it a bit would have helped the overall flow of the movie. All in all, it's really a minor complaint.
The Downright Horrendous- I would have let the evil little shrew die, but that's just me.
The Gory- This movie is packed with lots o' blood, which is natural since it's a vampire flick.
The Naked- This movie is also packed with some odd sexuality and plenty of nudity. It's nothing obscene or gratuitous, but it's there. Oh, it's there...
Best Line- I didn't take notes, but there were some very good lines, as this was a well written script. Next time, no trusting my memory...
What did we learn?- Some vampires are actually very nice and value human life. Also, others are insane sluts that love to kill.
Rating- B+ (8.5/10) In the age of Twilight, True Blood and nameless other vampire projects being thrown at us left and right, Thirst is a very good movie (if a tad overlong) which deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. I like feeling respected/appreciated by a filmmaker, as if they want to tell us a fun story and make it mean something beyond just flash and gloss, and this film did that for me. See it now.
Final Thoughts- You're doing it wrong, Vampire Kitty!
