Release: Now available on DVD
Running time: 133 minutes
Rating: MA

Catholicism, perhaps more than any other faith, gets a rough ride at the pictures. If priests are not portrayed as violent, hypocritical taskmasters in Irish melodramas then Hollywood positions bishops and cardinals as corrupt, petty political minders, not above political maneuvering and the odd assassination to maintain their hold over the masses.

In the South Korean film Thirst, priest Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) is a modern man of the cloth who acknowledges the need for scientific progress, but uses age-old teachings and beliefs to spread the word of God. Feeling the need to act, Sang-hyun donates his body for medical research, but instead gains new, vampiric super-powers. After he uses his abilities to save the life of childhood friend Kang-woo (Shin Ha-kyun), the priest becomes drawn to the man’s wife, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin).

In Park Chan-wook’s Thirst, vampirism becomes an effective metaphor for the temptation that afflicts all priests- desire. The Old Boy director takes that most Western of horror fare- the vampire story- and shades the drama with layers of moral ambiguity and subtextual meaning. Thirst is not simply a successful exercise in the genre (although it is a very effective, if subdued, horror piece), but a gripping, intellectual psychodrama about the nature of faith and man’s capacity for evil. Park Chan-wook explores these weighty, existential themes for a stylish, unsettling mood piece that is tightly paced and well characterized.

Although the story is punctuated by fierce, unflinching bursts of violence, Thirst is more than a simple gore-fest. I confess that I have not seen any of Park Chan-wook’s previous, but his storytelling here suggests that he is a filmmaker of dramatic weight, directing with fluid lyricism and a powerful sense of emotional intensity. As a visualist, he understands the power of colour, heightening the intensity of the reds against the muted background of white and blue, beautifully detailing the existential decay of the two central figures, in particular this impassioned, but doomed, priest.

Andrew Moraitis