Thirst

Korean cult director Park Chan-wook, most famous for the violent Oldboy (part of the Vengeance trilogy), takes on the vampire movie with this strange and stylish thriller. Song Kang-ho stars as Sang-hyeon, a dedicated Catholic priest who volunteers for a medical experiment and emerges as a bloodsucker, a classic old-school vampire who has to duck sunlight and drink human blood to survive. (As the resident priest of a hospital, he finds he can get by with borrowing a little from a comatose patient.) He treats his desires as just another test of his faith, but the prospect of death also gives him a new passion for life and its visceral pleasures. In contrast to his own restraint is the feral response of his lover, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), who goes from being a cowering, repressed victim to an enthusiastic predator. Park hits all the classic vampire themes in a loose, often meandering narrative that enters The Postman Always Rings Twice territory with an undercurrent of Catholic guilt, holy miracle, and supernatural thriller. Although its dense crowd of ideas tends to overwhelm, Thirst (co-winner of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize) offers a fascinating cultural twist and creative variation on the classic European horror film. Recommended. (S. Axmaker) [Blu-ray Review—July 2, 2019—Kino Lorber, 135 min., in Korean w/English subtitles, R, Blu-ray: $29.95—Making its debut on Blu-ray, 2009’s Thirst features a great transfer and a DTS-HD 5.1 soundtrack. Extras include audio commentary by entertainment journalist and author Bryan Reesman. Bottom line: this beautifully lensed atmospheric chiller shines on Blu-ray.]