Chan-wook Park’s draw to the horror genre has always been apparent. The dark brutal subject matter of his films, revolving around revenge, mystery, the unattainable and ultimately themes of regret, redemption and water (which signifies trouble and death in all of Park’s Films) could almost be part Alfred Hitchcock, part Roman Polanski and part Sam Fuller. The beautifully lit and gorgeous locked off compositions apparent in his Vengeance trilogy especially, often evokes Kubrick and his humour, which always bubbles under the surface, a kind of playfulness with gore, is perhaps reserved only for the Sam Rami’s or George Romero’s of the world.
Cut, his short film (along with Fruit Chan’s Dumplings and Taekashi Miike’s Box) which made up one third of Three… Extremes could be seen as his most horrorfied (yes its a word…) film to date. A kind of Saw like situation where a kidnapper cuts off a woman’s fingers for every sadistic task her husband fails. So all signs pointed to horror and, as it was announced in 2007, to the world of vampires.
Thirst focuses on world weary Priest Sang-hyun who, so distraught at the suffering around him as he volunteers at a local hospital, signs himself into a medical program to help irradiate a mutated virus called EV. After a blood transfusion where Sang-hyun is infected with the virus he awakes not only the only surviving patient but with a strange new problem with sunlight and many other desires deemed unsuitable for a man of the cloth.
As word of Sang-hyun’s survival spreads a chance meeting with a dying childhood friend Kang-woo (Ha-kyun Shin), his wife Tae-ju (Ok-vin Kim) and overbearing mother in law Lady Ra (Hae-sook Kim) pushes the vampire’s thirsts into the red. He has soon sparked an affair with Tae-Ju and is avoiding killing by drinking straight from patients drips at the local clinic, storing blood in his fridge and hopping around rooftops. Could it be that he has it under control?
Thirst (part clinical horror part tragic love story) wanders along with an oddness that Park has mastered over his last 5 features. Brilliantly touching moments are interspersed with genuinely gruesome ones and both are handled in precisely the same way. The films sound effects are pushed up to the max until there is no audible line between hearing two people kissing and hearing the slurping sound of a Sang-hyun’s feasting. Love and death are handled with the same amount of chilled relish.
Like most vampire films, Thirst is extremely sexual, the lusting characteristics of the monster make it impossible to avoid, however the cold precision that Park manages throughout and the script’s dark sense of humor beneath it all succeed in keeping it from slipping into the typical doomed loved scenario and far, far, far from the norm. There’s a hilarious suicide attempt, some excellent and sparingly used CGI, and a rolling and tumbling second half that throws the rule book away and instead veers gleefully in offering up more questions than it does answers, turns up the blood-letting and delivers a beautifully funny and touching climax.
Thirst’s disregard for convention and our own, easier to swallow (sorry about that) romantic view of vampires, perpetuated by the past years more mainstream efforts could end up alienating some viewers. Park’s films never pretend to be easy affairs (It also clocks in at 133 minutes - yes, that’s 43 minute over two full episodes of True Blood) and Thirst certainly isn’t popcorn cinema, but if you have got the chance to see it you’ll be rewarded with one of the most challenging and original vampire films of recent memory.
