Vampire Priest

It’s hard to tell if religion is being praised or slapped down in the South Korean film Thirst. It focuses on the Roman Catholic priest Sang Hyun (Song Kang-ho) who, wanting only to do good for mankind, volunteers in an experimental study of a killer virus. All the thanks he gets, after a series of supposedly life-saving blood transfusions, are that he’s the only survivor among 50 volunteers, he’s covered with horrifically ugly blisters, he coughs up blood, he’s gained an acute sense of smell, and, oh yeah, he’s become a vampire.

Writer-director Park Chan-wook (Old Boy) sticks with most of the standard rules of vampire lore, but conveniently leaves out the fear of crosses — living death would have been pretty difficult for a priest if crosses got in the way. And he adds a stronger than usual sexuality along with a pretty bizarre and very dark sense of humor to it all.

The complex plot, filled with all kinds of backstory, brings the priest together with the family of an old school friend, Kang-woo (Shin Ha-kyun) who has recently married Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), who years ago was taken in by Kang-woo’s family as an orphan.

Complications ensue. Tae-ju tells the priest how unhappy she is in her marriage; the priest feels a first flicker of attraction toward her; she makes it clear that she’s long had feelings of desire toward him; and after a steamy scene of kissing, licking, biting and love-making, he tries to tell her that he’s a vampire. Things don’t go very well from there.

Where’s that dark sense of humor? Here’s a hint: The priest is a good man who is struggling with this affliction. He knows that he could never kill anyone, even though his lust for blood is tearing him apart. His solution is to visit comatose hospital patients — as a priest, of course — and when no one is looking, slurping blood from their IV tubes. No matter how depraved that sounds, it comes across as funny on the screen.

Song Kang-ho, who also starred in the horror-comedy The Host, is superb as the conflicted priest, managing to get viewers to think of the character as both repulsive and sympathetic at different times. But Kim Ok-vin, as his forbidden love interest, gets to play with a much wider character arc, going through changes that won’t be revealed here but which are thrilling to watch.

The film turns into a tale of sickness, jealousy, infidelity, murder, an ever-increasing amount of black humor, and more than one vampire. Certain scenes not for the squeamish. Others, though, are  of haunting beauty, such as a segment showing two vampires, who have acquired the ability to fly, gracefully hopping from rooftop to rooftop.

Thirst’s main study is of the difference between good vampires who manage to get by without hurting anyone and those who gleefully go for throats.

Vampire films are quickly regaining the popularity they once enjoyed, with both Twilight and Let the Right One In drawing some big box office numbers last year, the Twilight sequel around the corner, and a big-screen adaptation of the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows in the works. But Thirst stands out among them all. It’s a spectacularly weird movie.