Thirst - a sadly dissapointing review

A film by Chan-wook Park, the writer-director of Oldboy, sporting a vampiric priest and erotic themes couldn't possibly go wrong, could it? Well, to my great surprise and even greater disappointment, it apparently could. And quite spectacularly did, for Thirst is a sub-par horror movie, that tries a little too hard to appear as some sort of deep and meaningful piece of filmic art, which frankly it is not.

Then again, as certain people tend to mistake a slow pace for true art, we can rest assured that these lost souls enjoyed the movie despite its convoluted and banal plot. Said plot is not only unspectacular and quite contrived, but also sports one of those oh-so-fashionable modern, touchy, emo vampires. Being a horror film of course we could overlook such genre cliches, but Thirst takes itself far too seriously to revel in the banality. There is no self-mockery to be found here. Thirst tries to be deep, thoughtful, sensual and all it manages is feel overdrawn.

After watching the thing I was sure it had lasted for more than two hundred minutes, which it clearly hadn't.

Seems I am easily bored by just another well mannered vampire, with a strong Christian faith no less, that effortlessly manages to overcome its new nature in stark contrast to its more, well, vampiric girlfriend. And the fact that the protagonist was sort of an ur-vampire created by a failed medical experiment didn't help at all and all the great acting and brilliant cinematography went to waste. For shame.