Thirst (Bakjwi) English MovieCast And Crew
Genre:Drama Horror
Kang-ho Song … Priest Sang-hyeon
Ok-vin Kim … Tae-joo
Hae-sook Kim … Lady Ra
Ha-kyun Shin … Kang-woo
In-hwan Park … Priest Noh
Dal-su Oh … Yeong-doo
Director:Chan-wook Park
Writers:Seo-Gyeong Jeong (writer)
Chan-wook Park (writer)
Reviews Overviews
Beloved and devoted priest from a small town volunteers for a medical experiment which fails and turns him into a vampire. Physical and psychological changes lead to his affair with a wife of his childhood friend who is repressed and tired of her mundane life. The one-time priest falls deeper in despair and depravity. As things turns for worse, he struggles to maintain whats left of his humanity.Sang-hyun (played by top Korean star Song Kang-ho, of The Host) is a priest who cherishes life; so much so, that he selflessly volunteers for a secret vaccine development project meant to eradicate a deadly virus. But the virus takes the priest, and a blood transfusion is urgently ordered up for him. The blood he receives is infected, so Sang-hyun lives but now exists as a vampire. Struggling with his newfound carnal desire for blood, Sang-hyuns faith is further strained when a childhood friends wife, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), comes to him asking for his help in escaping her life. Sang-hyun soon plunges into a world of sensual pleasures, finding himself on intimate terms with the Seven Deadly Sins.
Emile Zola meets New Age vampirism in South Korean helmer Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst,” an overlong stygian comedy that badly needs a transfusion of genuine inspiration. Inspired by and following key plot elements in Zola’s 19th-century novel of murder and adultery, “Therese Raquin,” the two-hour-plus pic is slow to warm up and largely goes around in circles thereafter, with repetitive (and often plain goofy) jokes about hemoglobin lust and bone-crunching, sanguinary violence. Some major surgery could help its specialized offshore potential, but this is startlingly unnuanced work from the director of such classy fare as “Oldboy” and “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.”
Film opened strongly April 30 in South Korea, and has taken 1.75 million admissions in its first two frames. But in its second week, it was knocked out of the top spot by action-comedy “My Girlfriend Is an Agent.”
Setup is strong, as Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho), a well-liked priest in a small town who works at the local hospital, contracts and dies from the deadly Emmanuel virus after volunteering in a project to discover a vaccine. After being brought back to life by a blood transfusion, he gradually realizes he’s been turned into a vampire, which gives him an extremely healthy sexual appetite but also requires regular doses of blood to keep his skin free of small boils.
Choice bits of Zola’s novel start to appear as Sang-hyeon starts an affair with Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), the wife of his childhood friend, Kang-woo (Shin Ha-gyun). Dowdy, put-upon Tae-ju, who spends her time looking after the sickly Kang-woo and being bullied by his doting mom, Mrs. Ra (as in “Raquin”; Kim Hae-suk), blooms into a voracious, free-spirited lover with Sang-hyeon. Soon they’re a pair in more ways than one, as their thirst for sex, thrills and red corpuscles turns them into mass murderers.
Project has been in Park’s mind for a decade — always with thesp Song in mind — but at some stage, what began as a typically wry, genre-bending take on sin and redemption seems to have shed most of its subtext. Though Sang-hyeon finds himself an object of worship as he develops special powers of strength and flight, what could have been a wonderfully transgressive spin on religion and its flipside devolves, especially in its second half, into blood-spattered, low-key farce revolving around a single, overworked idea.
Early grossout scenes lose their shock value with repetition, as the script amps up the semi-cartoonish violence in the third act. Tae-ju begins to relish the blood-sucking in a way that troubles even Sang-hyeon. But the movie never comes close to tapping the raw, gnawing need of vampirism that fueled pics such as Abel Ferrara’s “The Addiction” or Tony Scott’s “The Hunger.”
Song, perhaps South Korea’s most recognizable actor and a Park regular (”JSA,” “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance”), is never less than solid as the priest-turned-vampire but lacks some of the sheer physical presence he usually brings to the screen.
The major surprise is 22-year-old actress-model Kim Ok-vin (usually known, more correctly, as Kim Ok-bin), whose doll-like features made her the perfect underdog in the campy high school musical “Dasepo Naughty Girls.” Here, she puts to rest any doubts about her ability to take on a challenging role, throwing herself into topless sex scenes and vampiric munching with a lusty, bad-girl abandon.
As usual in Park’s movies, design is paramount, with Jeong Jeong-hun’s DV-originated lensing savoring the musty Lynchian colors of Ryu Seong-hye’s production design. Visual effects, especially in the flying scenes, are just OK by Korean standards.
Awakened to this strange new world, a world that requires the blood of others in order to survive, a world that requires things the priest has never thought himself capable of doing, brings up a lot of moralistic questions to the priest. In addition to his Thirst (title!), the priest is also confronted by growing feelings of sexuality towards the wife of a childhood friend. These feelings eventually manifest into some insane sex scenes, full of some of the more grosser sounds I’ve heard on a soundtrack. They also set the stage for the new life the once moral and decent man has now found himself living in.
There’s more to the story, including characters that would fit nicely in a light comedy about family relationships, but alas, this is not that movie. This is a dark, brutal, though often times hilarious, tale of morality and sexuality and having faith then losing it and hopefully regaining it once again. It’s chock full of great images and not overly drenched in blood. This is a horror movie, but not in a jump and scare you kind of way. It’s a film about somber moods and tension. It’s also a love story, as we discover the priest falling in love, not just for carnal pleasures (sex) but genuine love. And the regret that love brings.
Park Chan-wook has made a film that will not eradicate the memory of those precious Twilight tweens. There is a lot of blood shed, but if you’re willing to dig deeper, the movie is full of richer themes and powerful images. It’s not the greatest of all vampire movies (That would be Blade 2), and it doesn’t tread into any new territory. Instead it lingers on these moralistic choices and shows us a full human experience through the eyes of someone that’s no longer human but is beginning to taste life, and for that I respect the film a hell of a lot more than I actually liked it.
