For Reel

Director: Park Chan-wook

South Korean Park Chan-wook has established himself as one of the world’s most celebrated modern horror directors after adding the beloved “Vengeance Trilogy” to his resume (“Sympathy for Mr. Vengenace”, “Oldboy”, and “Lady Vengeance”). His latest is the most recent contribution to the ever-beloved vampire craze – but, well, it’s no “Twilight”. If you think contemporary cinema has fully explored the blood-sucking fiend genre, wait until you see how Chan-wook’s “Thirst” unfolds.

Song Kang-ho, who last appeared in Bong Joon-ho’s “The Host”, plays Sang-hyun – a priest in spiritual crisis. While sacrificing himself to medical research, things go terribly awry and he ends up in critical condition. After a blood transfusion, however, his strength is replenished and even heightened to supernatural excess. It, of course, is vampire blood now pumping through his veins.

Kang-ho feels what we will call vampiral guilt. Fortunately for him, he has access to a hospital and therefore can snack straight off of the unconscious patients’ IV drips. His thirst for blood becomes matched by his thirst for sex, as he falls for Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), the bored housewife of a dull man (Shin Ha-kyun) painfully dependent on his mother (Kim Hae-sook).

The film is shot by Chung Chung-hoon, who collaborated with Chan-wook on the Vengeance Trilogy. The visual style is pronounced and flourishing, and there’s a tremendous roof-jumping sequence that serves as the death of Tae-ju’s innocence. Chung-hoon’s visual boldness is perhaps only challenged by the sound design, with it’s unreasonably loud slurps and squishes.

“Thirst” is, to put it simply, out of it’s mind. There’s absurdity to the proceedings of a film like “Oldboy”, but Chan-wook’s latest spins off in entirely new directions everytime you think it’s beginning to wrap up. There’s no telling where it’s all going – when you fully witness Tae-ju transform from timid house-wife into bloodthirsty demon, you realize what a masterpiece of storytelling it all was.