Thirst

Let's start off by stating that I loved Old Boy. I discovered it by accident while playing one of my favorite games, Netflix have you seen that. I try to see if I have seen all the recommended movies of a movie I liked. Having freaked out at the cringe inducing Ichi the Killer I was willing to subject myself to more. Ya gotta test ya limits ya know.

So imagine how excited I was at learning that Chan-wook Park's next movie was imminent. I knew somehow the movie would be exhilarating and interesting and never boring. At least that's what I thought.

The set-up was appealing, a priest becomes a vampire in order to solve a rare blood disorder then falls in love with a beautiful damaged soul. But the execution of this set up was absolutely painful to watch for long stretches of time. On at least two if not more occasions I looked at my watch wondering, "what the heck? This movie should have been over like 40 minutes ago."

A lot of this stems from strange plot choices made by the director. I felt like the film couldn't decide what it wanted to be. At first it was a horror movie, filled with inventive twists on old horror movie tropes. I was willing to get into it, I wanted to get into it. But that's when Thirst got weird. It strayed off the tracks. I don't want to give away plot details but the forward momentum of the movie definitely switched gears. One of the main characters is dispatched, sort of, but in a very Blood Simple way it's never really clear if he's dead and who sees what.

Then the film becomes a situational comedy! The humor is ratcheted up and the two main characters are forced to relate to each other as they learn to live undead love like we dove through the Woody Allen situational rabbit hole. And it almost works too which is the weird part! The movie almost redeems itself from its weird transition. A lot of that is due to the amazing acting of Hae-sook Kim. She literally acts with only her eyes and it works to hilarious results. But then the movie turns again (see told you it was too long) and becomes more Bride of Frankenstein than vampire movie. When the sun finally rises on this movie, get it rises not sets? woka woka woka! Yeah I know anyway, you are exhausted and perplexed. A really good film was in there somewhere.