Thirst - 2009

Damn, I knew this was 2009 at first, then I talked myself out of it, turns out my first instinct was correct.  Ah, the date guessing game.  I know you love it.

Chan Wook Park, or Park Chan Wook is a fairly well known Korean filmmaker, his film Oldboy was remade at some point recently, and then he followed it up with the American produced Stoker, which I don't think did a lot here stateside.  Between those two was Thirst, starring Kang-Ho Song, of recent Academy Award winner film Parasite (fucking see it, it's awesome).

Thirst is a slow burn film, the kind that begins and you're not sure about the main character.  It is perhaps not a spoiler to say this is a vampire movie.  The cover, the synopsis, the trailer, it's all in there.  Since we know it's vampires, we expect to see it right away, but the movie takes a slow meditative approach to the reveal, and I do kinda wish I hadn't known that going in. 

However, once it's revealed, it's all the sudden even said, or at least subtitled, Vampire.  And without any backstory or explanation it now defines our main character.  He is Sang-Hyun, a priest and devoutly centered person.  He finds great suffering in his faith because of his desires, and he also has lust for the wife of some really spineless annoying weird. 

There's a lot of comedy in this movie, which was really nice, and it's very funny.  The weirdness and the sexuality depicted is groundbreaking too, and in fact it is the first Korean film to have male frontal nudity.  It had one of the best sex scenes, I've seen recently...Or ever.  Probably ever.  Aside from that, it's a slow burn drama about his interaction with this family he's thrown into, his vampirism, and his crisis in faith.

I got about an hour into this, being very into it and 100% along for the ride, and then it sorta fell apart for me.  It was very long, very dense, and a lot of it we see coming in different ways.  It of course has a lot of cool unique places it goes, but holy shit.  You gotta wait, and there's an equal or greater than amount of shit that is not cool or unique and instead just tedious. 

I think they want to make it long so that it's a character study, but 30 minutes could have easily been cut, and should've.  I lost interest, and several parts were too Korean for their own good.  I can say it, I come from a place of huge knowledge about Korean cinema. 

Thirst is good, and not to be dismissed.  I'll give it a 4.