Thirst is a Korean vampire movie by acclaimed award-winning director Park Chan-wook. Thirst was recently released at the end of April in Korea to selling more than a million tickets nationwide in its opening weekend. Scheduled for a limited release in the US on July 31, it tells the story of Sang-hyun (played by Song Kang-ho), a priest, who becomes a vampire through a failed medical expriment and his struggles with an immoral attraction to married childhood friend Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin).

I've seen a few of Park Chan-wook's other movies, including Old Boy and Joint Security Area), so I knew going into the screening of Park's tendency towards raw human emotion and dark themes in general. Thirst does not stray far from his style and goes further to expound on such interesting juxtapositions as the moral implications of a dedicated priest becoming a being who feasts on human blood.

The filmography, settings, and sparse, but appropriate soundtrack do well in providing a nice background to the dark story. Thirst features similar themes as other western vampire movies, but sets itself enough apart from them to remain interesting to the avid vampire movie viewer. I enjoyed Sang-hyun's moral descent and the various stepping stones on the way to which his vampirism usually did not contribute. For instance, his attraction to Tae-ju was not because he was a vampire, but because as a Catholic priest, he has never been with a woman and is drawn to her.

Thirst also has many comedic moments, which are genuinely funny. It's very gory, so if you shy away at the sight of blood or gore, you may want to shy away from the movie. A good example of both the type of gore to expect and the differences from western vampires is the fact that rather than using extended teeth to extract tasty blood from their unwilling prey, the vampires sometimes use a cutting implement to slit the wrists or throats of their victims and drink the blood that way. That said, I don't actually consider the movie to be a horror movie, though that's probably the closest genre I would classify it.

Overall, I enjoyed Thirst a good bit and would recommend it, especially fans of Park Chan-wook's works. While not perfect (I didn't particularly care for Tae-ju's role in the story other than as an object of lust for Sang-hyun, nor for some of the seemingly sudden transitions in the movie), I believe that it's a good, solid story with an interesting take on vampires. It is long, however, so if reading subtitles for more than two hours would bother you, maybe you should wait for the American remake (already being talked about). But hey, if there's already a remake being talked about, it's gotta be good, right?