A deeply committed Christian priest in South Korea, Sang-hyeon (Kang-ho Song), offers himself as a test subject in the fight against a mysterious global pandemic. He travels out of the country to a clinic where he’s deliberately infected with the virus and accidentally receives a tainted blood transfusion. A host of new vampiric cravings and impulses arise in the priest. Sang-hyeon meets a young woman, Tae-joo (Ok-bin Kim), an orphan who works for her mother-in-law, Lady Ra (Hae-sook Kim). Director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy), co-writing with Seyo-Geyong Jeong, crams the thematic motifs into Thirst: conflict between faith and flesh, globalization of disease and cure and social inequality. Besides being a vampire movie, the priest-gone-bad thing’s been done, really (Silver Bullet, the 1985 adaptation of a Stephen King story). It’s a paint-by-numbers plot story, but fun and entertaining to watch for the way the cinematography dances, the pallid light and colour palette and the sense of quiet conflict Song brings to the priest’s character.
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2009.