Thirst
If you have not seen any movie on vampire, then you must take efforts to enjoy a tryst with South Korea’s most successful horror films’ director Park Chan Wook. His other works that have already become cult classics include Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Lady Vengeance and the best known ever film Old Boy. His work on horror films leaves a deep impact as he goes in-depth into the complex process of human nature before blending the scary elements into it. He has been the recipient of Jury Prize in Cannes Film Festival this year.
The main strand of the story is a Priest named Sang Hyun whose only motive is to do good for the mankind. On one such attempt he volunteered for a medical experiment for developing a vaccine for a deadly blood disease in which he dies. The Roman Catholic priest was immensely a good man but his death unfolds new chapters in this film.
What happens next is horrifying as he resurrects as a vampire through a blood transfusion and that was never his fault. However, he had to suck blood to ward off the disease but he did possess the power to heal the diseased and sick. The director personified the horror with sounds of slurping when the saint consumed blood from the patients in hospital.
Vampires have always been the subject of some great films just because they fascinate us. The reason is simple. Vampires do no things out of evil, what they do is sheer out of necessity. In this film, the priest gets fuelled from fire of desires and gets infatuated with Tae-ju, the beautiful wife of his childhood friend. He has always been the savior of people in distress and this time it was no difference. The girl was badly treated by her husband and mother and she came to the priest for a respite.
These two people eventually become close and rest of the film moves with its pace. She began loving him so much that she ignored all details of his vampirism. With time, several plots get hatched rotating around the intimacy of the two. But soon, both fight within as their senses get filled with remorse and the story culminates to gory details of betrayal and guilt.
An attempt to grapple between morality and desire, Thirst is presented with some breathtaking shots that will leave ineffaceable imprint. This movie is based on Therese Raquin by Emile Zola but had this not been mentioned by the director, no one would have ever been able to connect Thirst with the novel as Emile Zola never wrote of priest turning into a vampire.
Did the priest live forever with slurping blood from the innocent and not using his fangs to suck blood? To know more hit the theaters.
| Film | Thirst |
|---|---|
| Cast | Kang-ho Song as Priest Sang-hyeon, Ok-vin Kim as Tae-joo, Hae-sook Kim as Lady Ra, Ha-kyun Shin as Kang-woo, In-hwan Park as Priest Noh, Dal-su Oh as Yeong-doo, Young-chang Song as Seung-dae, Mercedes Cabral as Evelyn |
| Director | Park Chan-Wook |
| Writer | Park Chan-Wook, Jeong Seo-Gyeong |
| Rating | 3.5/5 |
Posted on Saturday, August 15th, 2009 at 9:29 pm