On the surface, Thirst, the latest film from Park Chan-Wook (who did the brilliant Oldboy, the pretty great Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and the okay Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), is the story of a Korean priest who becomes a vampire. But what it’s really about is Park’s ongoing analysis of the corrosive effect sin has on the soul. Initially a bottomless well of compassion and morality in a world that needs it, the infected priest is soon drinking the blood of a bitter fellow priest and having hot vampire sex with an unhappily married woman. This leads to a cycle of increasingly immoral behaviour, with each step coming faster, steeper and easier.
As a thesis, that’s pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the movie jumps from idea to idea until it’s tonally all over the place. And while some of those tones are clear and sharp, a lot of them are pretty fucking leaden, with plot points added and abandoned and characters undergoing sudden unexplained personality changes.