Movie Review: Thirst
Before I get into the review, I want to share a small story about what happened AFTER the movie. A Q&A with the director, Park Chan-Wook, was scheduled to follow the special screening on Comic-Con’s Friday night. For various reasons, I would have to miss the Q&A. I was sad to miss this opportunity, so I looked around carefully as I left the theater, thinking if I was lucky I might spot Mr. Wook and get to say something to him… Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a man wearing nicely tailored, comfortable clothing, standing serenely and rocking on his heels. He wore a beatific smile and had his hands clasped in front of him. My initial read was: This is a man preparing himself to accept criticism. In my mind, it was then very obvious – this is Park Chan-Wook. I stepped up to him and asked if he was the director. He said that yes he was. I proceeded to have a brief conversation with him, telling him what I thought of the movie and that Oldboy was of personal inspiration to me (which it is)… He smiled and thanked me. I gave him my card and a little bow, and was walking on Cloud 9 for the rest of the night.
Now, if I switched places with you, the reader, and had just read the preceeding paragraph I might be wondering if the review I was reading could hope to remain unbiased. That’s why I’m making a special point to let you know I’ve also seen his movie, Lady Vengeance, which I wasn’t as taken by… so take heart, readers. You’re about to consume as objective a review as I can make it.
To begin with, I’ll tell you a little bit about the plot of Thirst. Priest SANG-HYEON is disenchanted with his faith, making suggestions during a confession to “seek help through science”, and has taken to physically punishing himself for these impure thoughts. On the other hand, he still lives by a moral code and is driven by a desire to help people – something that a more pious priest might do as well. However, as we soon find out, Priest Sang-Hyeon’s disenchantment is winning the battle and soon decides that physically punishing himself isn’t enough. He decides volunteers to become a test subject for an experiment to cure a horrific disease called “EV”. The clinic’s first step is to infect Sang-Hyeon, leading to one of the most horrifying scenes in the movie, where we see what happens to Sang-Hyeon as his internal organs liquify while he’s playing his recorder… The clinic’s next step is to introduce their cure. They initially pronounce him dead, calling the experiment a failure, but when Sang-Hyeon comes back to life seemingly cured of the disease, he’s declared a miracle and hounded by sick people from all over looking for a cure of their own from his healing touch…
This is where the meat of the story begins, because after Sang-Hyeon is cured, he discovers he’s now got an insatiable Thirst for human blood. If he doesn’t drink it, his disease comes back with a vengeance. At this point in the story, I thought Sang-Hyeon might be a vampire in name only, having to drink blood or else he gets sick again… but that’s not the case. He’s a vampire in other ways too – sunlight’s deadly, he’s super strong, he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, and most importantly he can make others into vampires… which brings us to the love interest… TAE-JOO, a formerly orphaned girl who was taken in by a repulsive family leading to a “forced” marriage with the son, who’s dying of cancer. How can she be the love interest, you ask? Well, it would be wrong of me to try and summarize the whole movie in this article. It’s worth going on the journey yourself to find out what happens as you watch it. I will say though that Sang-Hyeon does eventually turn Tae-Joo into a vampire as well, and THAT’S when all hell truly breaks loose… You see, though Sang-Hyeon is now a vampire – he still lives by a somewhat moral code, being a former priest. Tae-Joo doesn’t have any of those kinds of hesitations.
Thirst captured the humor, horror, and touching nature of Chan-wook’s previous movies in a dazzling way. Whenever I sit down to watch a film which is made in a language other than English, I almost always worry that I won’t be able to engage with the material. I’m concerned that I’ll have to try harder to relate to the characters and even that reading the subtitles will force me to maintain some distance and prevent me from engaging. None of these things was true with Thirst. It opened with a generous dosage of humor and I instantly related to Priest Sang-Hyeon, the main character. Being an English speaker, another thing I appreciated is the excellent attention to translation and humor in the subtitling. Even some made up words like “absoposilutely” were translated into English. I’m not sure what that word would be in Korean, but the instant the subtitle popped up on screen, the entire audience burst out in laughter.
One thing Park succeeded in was making some characters in his movie who on the surface should be sympathetic into monsters – a surprising and interesting twist. One of the most despicable and unpleasant people in it was Tae-Joo’s husband – a young man who’s dying of cancer. Most American filmmakers wouldn’t touch the idea of making someone like that so despicable due to the sensitive nature of a dying subject, but Park is unafraid. He makes the character selfish, demanding, immature, and generally unpleasant. It’s also a testiment to the actor, Ha-kyun Shin, for making him so despicable. Another character that fit this mold was Lady Ra, Tae-Joo’s step mother – another despicable character played brilliantly. Of course, it wasn’t just the performances of the “bad guys” that should be praised. Kang-ho Song brought the first vampire priest (that I know of) to life with humor and pathos. His portrayal of such a conflicted character was filled with invention. Also, the downtrodden love interest Tae-joo’s transformation into a vivacious bloodsucker would never have been so compelling without the grace and cuteness of the actress that played her, Ok-vin Kim.
Another thing Park always gets high marks for is his visual sensibility. This can also can be attributed to his frequent and brilliant collaborator, cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon who has once again gone above and beyond. Scenes full of flowing camera moves and brilliant visual jokes are a treat to the eyes. A moment in the film that is especially worth noting for its visual flair is the ride that the Vampire gives his lover across the city’s rooftops. The whole sequence in question is shot from the vampire’s prospective as he looks down on his lover’s face as he holds her in his arms. We can see her feelings of fear melt away and become replaced by elation as she goes on what could only be described as an impromptu thrill-ride. Attempting to compare this scene to a similar one in Twilight is apt to happen… but I say there’s no comparison. Thirst accomplished this scene with grace and beauty. Twilight reduced it to a sense of awkwardness and ended up dull.
Of course, no movie is perfect, and Thirst is not an exception. Though much of the film is enchanting, it does feel a lack of direction for a period of time in the middle and seems to end many times before reaching its entertaining closing sequence. If I didn’t feel that many of the scenes where the movie “ended” were quite as entertaining as they were, this would be a much bigger problem. Another issue I noted while watching was that although the movie makes enough sense, it can be hard to follow at times because the director is relying on his audience to make the same intuitive leaps in logic that he does… He doesn’t always give too much direction on how they should follow along. For this reason, one might call Thirst a “smart movie”. For some audiences this can detract from their enjoyment. Whether it does for you is a personal thing.
Vampires have once again been all the rage in media for the last few years, what with the commercial successes of Twilight and True Blood and the critical success of Let The Right One In, so some of you might be wondering whether watching another vampire movie is worth your time. I tell you a hearty YES.
Thirst is scheduled for release in the United States on July 31st starting in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Given success in those markets, it may expand wider. I hope it comes to your home town sooner rather than later.
See Thirst when you can and learn why Park Chan-Wook is a director to watch.
Total Score: 8 out of 10
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