Nonureva Really Surprised!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

ashild-blovvig One thing I've noticed with Chan-Wook Park's movies is that his strongest skills lies in the visuals, while sometimes the story has some bigger holes and weaknesses. This is especially the case of Thirst.I enjoy Chan-Wook Park's movies as any other, I love his visual style. I think my favourite so far is The Handmaiden. Oldboy is also good. First, some complaints.My problem with this movie is that it doesn't seem to know exactly what it wants to be. It's a bit dark, but not that dark. It's a bit comical and odd, but not that odd or not that comical. It has elements of a long Journey/rise and fall story, but doesn't fill that criteria either. I had quite many problems with the end because it built up to something dramatic (not epic, but quite emotional), but in between of when you know what is going to happen and the ending itsself, there's some odd, misplased comical part (but it also seemed natural at the same time, because of the weird comedy? I have mixed feelings about it), and I didn't believe the way Tae-ju (Ok-bin Kim) acted and reacted to any of it (I feel that's more fault on the screenplay and less on the actress).The movie jumps a lot in time and has a lot of fades where there's no necessity for fades. One character is about to say something, but then it cuts to something else, one thing happens, and the next there's a misplaced scene right after it. I've seen movies where this kind of editing can work, but in this movie, it just doesn't work that well. There were also a couple of scenes where the action of a character really didn't make sense and wasn't explained in any way.I like the characters, but some of them (especially Tae-ju) have some strange character arcs that somehow doesn't fit right with me. It works and doesn't work at the same time. They're interesting, but also act strange and unnatural, so it's difficult to know where you have them, and it makes them unpredictable in their behaviour (which, depending on your taste, can be good or bad).Another complaint is that whoever did the sound design was a little too liberal with the licking/sucking/spit/mouth sounds. I get that it can be emphasized in a vampire movie, but it loses it's effect after the first ten times.Now, things I liked:I do like that the movie is a little out of the box when it comes to the vampire theme, although it still follows the more typical love vampire story. There's luckily no "order" or something of vampires, no explanation of where it came from, it just so happens that Sang-hyeon (Kang-ho Song) was unlucky and got the wrong blood. I like the lore in this one, where if he doesn't feed, he starts to become ill almost like a leper.And my favourite actor in this movie, I have to say, is the mother Lady Ra (Hae-suk Kim). She's plays her character perfectly, she's maleficent and kind of evil, but also really funny (my favourite line by her has to be the very simple and short "Closing time" when the shops closes after no customers for the whole day), loves her son (a little too much), and further out in the film gets more and more interesting.The visuals are, as always, beautiful. Like I mentioned, Chan-wook Park is really good with visuals, and I'm glad he continues to use it.The movie is in general enjoyable. I can ignore the oddities, or appreciate them, and enjoy it as a relatively simple movie. I'd say this is a good vampire movie, not great, but worth a watch.

ctpahho It is not easy to find such weird movies, where things make sense but are somehow giving controversial emotions and slight grin on the face.Effects of slurping, super sounded kisses, fetishism, insanity, so called evil and bad are whirl-winding in this vampire story, leaving you wide eyed watching for the anticipation of the next scene craziness. Personally I couldn't feel anything horrifying but ironic smirks and smiles within me. What surprised me was the real feeling of love and romance that was growing up with the story.Enjoy.

lasttimeisaw A vampire love story loosely based on Émile Zola's THERESE RAQUIN, Chan-wook Park's THIRST (its original Korean title literally means: bat) is a blood-soaked psychological thriller about a Catholic priest Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho), after experiencing a death-defying recovery owing to an undisclosed blood transfusion during his volunteer mission to find a vaccine for a deadly virus, he becomes the only survivor among all the infected, which attracts many devotees to worship him as a miracle from God. But the reality is that a craving for human blood has been commenced after the incident, the virus is still plaguing him, his skin is afflicted with blisters, only human blood can prohibit the symptoms and turn him into a nighttime creature endowed with all its well-established trappings like self- recovery, human-exceeding agility and strength. So he becomes a vampire priest, battles his thirst for blood and sexual lust aroused by his metamorphosis, and also, it is a game-changer for his devout faith. He is reunited with his childhood friend Kang-woo (Shin), who is diagnosed with cancer, and his mother Lady Ra (Kim Hae-suk). But it is Tae-ju (Kim OK-bin), Kang-woo's wife, who is an orphan raised in the household, en-kindles Sang-hyun's repressed desire, deeply affected by Tae-ju's wretched story of being abused by both Kang-woo and Lady Ra, he ventures into a sexual relationship with her, eventually leads to a premeditated murder, afterwards, both plagued by guilt and haunted by the dead, their rapport internally disrupts when Sang-hyun finds out Tae-ju's ulterior motive, after a violent commotion, Tae-ju has been brought back to life as a vampire. The rest of the story can be viewed as a doomed romance driven by the incongruous nature between a man and a woman who may or may not love him.The film harvests a Jury Prize in Cannes 2009, a massive domestic box-office champion too, it highly encapsulates Park Chan-wook's stylishness of drenching gore with nimble camera-movement and lurid colour scheme, paves the way for his next step into mainstream Hollywood with big star vehicle STOKER (2013). Notably, it also inquires into one's utmost challenge to his religious belief, Sang-hyun is as much as tormented by the ascetic canons of Catholicism as his sexual impulse and blood-thirst after the infection, until the final abandonment of his saintly embodiment before he meets the crucifixion.Song Kang-ho, the most bankable film star in South Korea, diverts from his regular kind guy persona, embraces his fatalistic destruction with compassionate commitment, flares up with retro sheen under Chan-wook's slick versatility either in CGI-embroidered sequences or the claustrophobic settings where blood is running amok. Kim OK-bin, a newcomer then, triumphantly trumps all the veterans in her stunning depiction of Tae-ju's conflicted personalities and raw seduction, both actors also bravely engage in stark nude scenes which are still not common to be seen on the mainstream territory. Kim Hae-suk, as Lady Ra, achieves a different kind of thrill using only her eyeballs to dictate the most compelling set piece of suspense, and remains as the most uncertain variable up until the very end, indeed, all three performances are mind-blowing in this heretic genre piece, and Park Chan- wook is destined to continue his streak as an iconoclast condemning the morbid society by spiking bloodshed into violence and sex in a more global scope.

Dave from Ottawa In an age where vampires are harmless enough to become a teen's high school crush, here comes one that puts the horror back into them. A priest becomes a vampire from a blood transfusion - which begs the question: how did the Red Cross get a VAMPIRE to donate a pint? - then gets involved with an unhappily married woman. But the priest finds the prospect of killing to slake his new thirst appalling, while the woman sees a conversion to vampirism as a way of liberating herself from her drab existence. Very much NOT in the cutesy romantic mold of The Vampire Diaries and the like, this movie plays like a black comedy / erotic horror movie, with the dark desires, self-loathing and self-deceptions of the two main characters on full view the whole time. Odd, eccentric and quite watchable, thanks to good special effects and eerie cinematography.