Thirst

Directed by: Park Chan-Wook
Written by: Jeong Seo-Gyeong & Park Chan-Wook
Full credits from IMDb

God knows that now, more than ever, we need another vampire movie. But seriously — we could use a good one. And thus far, the recent American contributions to the genre have been deficient; ever sex-obsessed, our culture's vampire narratives have run the gamut of carnal extremes, from chaste pre-teen fantasies to cheesy oversexed soap operas. It takes foreigners to lay bare the inherent romanticism of the vampire picture — the sensitivity; hitherto, Let the Right One In, the Swedish adolescence-allegory, has been the only laudable entry into the Neo-Vampire canon. But now we can add the Korean Thirst (Bakjwi) to this (finally) growing list. Director Park Chan-wook's coup is to toggle between playing his vampirism for laughs and using it to tease out an operatic, Sweeney Todd-level of tragedy. It's not a great vampire story; it's a deliciously overblown and strangely moving love story. About vampires.

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