Thirst (2009)

No other monster’s reputation has suffered the battering of bad films more thoroughly than that of the notorious vampire. The great and bloody stature of this renowned villain has been tainted and drained over the decades with a deluge of uninspired films filled with empty characters and cookie cutter plot lines. The paper thin stereotype of a sexy and romantic vampire was lifted up as a burning sun to eclipse the dark moon of its truer nature, until its bright and corny light was nearly all that could be seen for decades. 30 Days of Night was one of the more recent to break this trend and made vampires ugly and mean again; Let the Right One In continued the divergence with its poetic story of children, vampiric and otherwise, and their all-too-human inclinations for violence; and Park Chan-wook brings us a new wonderful film, Thirst, in which a well meaning young priest bleeds himself and others to suffer the degradation of immorality.

Thirst joins a small breed of high concept and high quality vampire films; it surrenders its blood and soul to sin, finds its fuel in passion and lust, and is soundly riddled with an absurdist comedy that chuckles even as the red stuff flies.

Priest Sang-hyeon wants to be a good man. He joins the priesthood, commits himself to a life of God, and yet finds himself plagued with doubt and uncertainty. He enlists in a medical study to battle the dreaded and lethal F.I.V virus in a final and rather desperate pursuit of a higher cause. This study certainly comes with significant risks, death featured prominently among them. Sang-hyeon survives the medical trial and the bizarre blood transfusions, but does so affected, and alone; he is the only survivor among the very many to try.

He returns home as something like a saint. His unlikely survival marks him as a man of God, and the masses plea for him to pray for their many ailments, both large and small. Sang-hyeon finds refuge in the home of an old friend and his wife and mother, but this refuge brings its own conflicts when a strong sexual tension swiftly builds between the priest and his friend’s neglected wife. Even more distressing is the revelation of the legacy of the medical experiments; Sang-hyeon soon finds he has turned into a vampire and must consume human blood or suffer full body blistering outbreaks of the F.I.V virus and complete agony. Sang-hyeon gives into this new need for blood, as well for the overpowering lust for his friend’s wife, and the two begin a spiraling descent into immorality, sin, and lots of murder – a vampire’s nature, after all.

Despite all the serious baggage loaded on the trolley, Thirst is executed with a clever wit that breaks up the story with dark and absurdist humor. While rife with horror trappings, Thirst is best described as a tragicomedy; the characters are tragically doomed and their actions on the way to damnation are often tragically funny. One of the more memorable moments is how Sang-hyeon’s guilty conscious is represented by a haunting from one of his victims, who keeps turning up in extremely awkward places and with a sincerely goofy expression. Scenes like this one are seeded throughout the film; weaving a resilient fiber of absurdist humor throughout its many leaves of tragedy, lust, and murder.

There is also a somewhat surprising amount of sex in Thirst; which, ironically, shouldn’t be surprising considering the prominent theme of the film is a decadent fall into immorality. It’s just that it stands out when juxtaposed with your average US film, even the R-rated ones, which have gotten more and more timid over the last few decades. This is especially true since the curse of doom that is NC-17 loomed its ugly head and threatened financial failure on any unfortunate film who dared to cross its sweaty threshold. Don’t get me wrong – the scenes within Thirst aren't don't quite approach soft core titillation, but there is enough bumping and grinding to stand out amongst the hang-wringing frigidity that makes up the bulk of R-rated US films.

Park Chan-wook is well known for his Vengeance trilogy, those being Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Lady Vengeance. Fans of Park Chan-wook will likely be pleased with Thirst; while the film is not quite as sophisticated as the trilogy, the director’s fluid and poetic style is still distinctly present. Thirst doesn’t contain the same thematic relations of vengeance, but it certainly is a blood relative to the well known and beautiful trilogy. There is an overlap in their thematic relations. Lady Vengeance, in particular, was nearly as much about atonement as it was about revenge. While Thirst does not carry a theme of revenge, it certainly does feel in relation to Lady Vengeance; at least in its beautifully desperate need for redemption and clarity.