Director: Chan-wook Park
Starring: Kang-ho Song, Ok-bin Kim, Hae-sook Kim, Ha-kyun Shin, In-hwan Park, Dal-su Oh, Young-chang Song, Mercedes Cabral, Eriq Ebouaney, Hee-jin Choi, Woo-seul-hye Hwang, Hwa-ryong Lee, Mi-ran Ra
Cert: 18
Region: B (locked)
Length: 133mins
Video: AVC, 1080p, 2.35:1
Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Languages: Korean
Subtitles: English
Number of Discs: 1

There's a lot to like in Chan-wook Park's latest film - a modern take on vampire lore starring old friend Kang-ho Song (Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance) - but even though it won the Jury Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival there's just as much to pick apart in Thirst as there is to celebrate. Still, it's hard to deny Park's originality in approaching a subject so many previous films have already explored; namely a human falling in love with a vampire. (Hint: it always ends badly).

Based loosely on a novel by Emile Zola, Thirst tells the tale of a priest named Sang-hyeon (Song) who, having volunteered for medical experiments, winds up a vampire via a bad blood transfusion. Though he gains new strength, he also finds it harder to resist certain 'physical' urges and reluctantly starts an affair with the wife of a family friend. Tae-ju (Ok-bin Kim) seems on the surface to be Cinderella - her adopted mother treats her like a slave, she has to wait hand and foot on her perpetually ill husband - but to Sang-hyeon's horror she turns out to be Lady Macbeth, scheming for him to murder anyone who gets in her way and to become a powerful vampire herself. Since Sang-hyeon was infected with a virus before he turned, he needs to drink blood to stop his skin breaking out in painful boils. To get around this without taking any lives he takes small sips from a coma patient he regularly visits at the local hospital. At night, of course.

Upon becoming a vampire Tae-ju doesn't quite share the compassion of her priest lover and quickly starts drawing unwanted attention as the bodies start to pile up and up. Her mother in law may now be paralysed from a stroke but that doesn't mean she's not aware of the sudden change in her daughter-in-law. Director Park has great fun with a game of Mahjong where Mrs Ra turns informant by blinking yes or no to her detective friend as a worried Sang-hyeon looks on. The superhuman strength granted a vampire is used quite sparingly throughout the film but that makes seeing the lovers jump across roof-tops and pummel each other into a bloody mess when they get in an argument that much more pleasurable to watch. The director's trademark inclination towards slapstick violence is also present and accounted for ("He dumps me and then he drops me?!" mutters an incredulous Tae-ju after her bf drops her head-first off a building).

The special effects and wire-work are good but the film stumbles badly in the pacing department. The love scenes seem to go on forever (awkward) and Sang-hyeon frequently visits a fellow priest to discuss his sinful predicament (boring). Meanwhile it's well over an hour before Tae-ju becomes a vampire and we're finally treated to some giddy, witty action. Witness Tae-ju leaping in front of cars to lure out motorists to snack on or, once the jig is up, chasing her terrified friends around the house, grinning with the same giddy gusto as Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Park is good at slipping in little quirks such as Mrs Ra judging the level of her son's illness by the tang of his farts or Sang-hyeon using a wardrobe for a coffin but this time around his surreal sequences lack bite and ultimately he can't paint over what his movie really is: A slow, semi-predictable vampire parable with the odd dash of cinematic ingenuity.

Film: 73%