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Bakjwi (Thirst), 2009as reviewed by Lazarus of Bethany, formerly
on February 19, 2010
general
| Release | 2009 |
| Written by | Seo-Gyeong Jeong
Chan-wook Park |
| Directed by | Chan-wook Park |
| Run Time | 133 minutes |
| Color | Color |
| Language | Korean, English, French |
cast
| Kang-ho Song Priest Sang-hyeon | | | Ok-bin Kim Tae-ju | | | Hae-sook Kim Lady Ra | | | Ha-kyun Shin Kang-woo | | | In-hwan Park Priest Noh | | | Dal-su Oh Yeong-doo | | | Young-chang Song Seung-dae | | | Mercedes Cabral Evelyn | | | Eriq Ebouaney Immanuel | |
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Greetings bloodsacks. Uncle Lazarus here in a particularly foul mood. I hate people, and hate just as much their opinions or needs or wants, so imagine my rage at being asked to review a movie. An Asian subtitled movie, at that, which means I have to read Asians being overly dramatic. Grrr.... Well Erzulie, here you go. Choke on it.
To start with, I hate Asia. It is a stupid continent. Generally speaking vampires stay away from Asia for many reasons, mostly the fact that vampires are usually taller than 5 foot 2, so it is hard for them to blend in there. As for the movie, first off, they picked the wrong Asian nationality. Everyone knows there is no such this as a Korean vampire. I would have liked to see either a Filipino or Chinese vampire. Next - I really really really really hate stupid subtitles. I would rather guess at what they are saying than to have to read " Tae-ju! Change your husband's hot water bag!" Shut up you dumb old bitch. This movie is long. Overly long I think. About 20 minutes of pointless screaming and crying could have easily been edited out.
The movie starts with our protagonist - Sang-hyun, who is a Catholic priest, volunteering his time at a local hospital. After seeing so much death, our compassionate hero decides he needs to make a real difference so he volunteers to participate in an experiment to find a cure for the deadly Emmanuel Virus. Stupid sap. So he goes to Africa, at least I think it is Africa - my second least favorite continent, but Africa looks more like a Midwestern American family's backyard.
In the process of participating in the experiment, Sang-hyun gets sick and develops very attractive boils all over himself, pukes up blood a lot and then miraculously recovers after he gets some new blood. Of course, the gullable people of his homeland hear about his recovery and think he is a God evidently when he returns, even though he is wrapped with bandages like the invisible man. He also somehow learned how to do magic while in Africa as he gets hired to perform at Korean birthday parties as well as lay his healing hands on the sick and dying.
Among his new worshippers are his childhood acquantance Kang-Woo who has become a strange toad-like sickly creature and his beleaguered wife, Tae-ju. it is at this time where Sang-hyun completes his transformation into being a vampire. This is also when he turns into a debaucherous Roman Catholic undead Jackie Chan. he can fly, he drinks blood, he bangs his friends’ wives, and he becomes inexplicably good at Mah-Jong. I did not think any humans were aware of the secret that vampires are all Mah-jong masters. is nothing sacred?!?! Damn nosey Koreans...
Anyway, so Tae-ju's lot in life is changing her husband's hot water bag and running in her bare feet up and down the street at night to get over her aggravation at being a slave and likely to prevent her from killing her mother-in-law. Sang-hyun starts having sex with Tae-ju on the downlow... a lot... and graphically. Tae-ju always had a thing for Roman Catholic Vampire Priests with boils all over their faces...I mean, who doesn't??? Sang-hyun's blind Master-Po type Priest boss asks for some vampire blood (he knows) so he can see again, which apparently annoys Sang-hyun and gives him a good excuse to quit the priesthood, as if being a vampire and having sex with his friends’ wives were not enough reason.
Somehow, he manages to move into Kang-Woo's house so he can be closer to Tae-ju. Sang-hyun and Tae-ju then decide to kill Kang-Woo, who kind of looks like a Korean Steve Buschemi - presumably because Kang-Woo is abusing Tae-ju. So on a little fun fishing expedition they drown him. Lady Ra, the annoying loud mother of Kang-woo, goes intervention and drinks herself into some kind of paralyzed state, which is awesome, because we do not have to hear her yapping and screeching anymore.
This is where the movie, for me anyways, starts getting good, my little necrophiliacs... Tae-ju and Sang-hyun start seeing Kang-wu's ghost, or perhaps it is as Sang-hyun mentions about 50000 times - just their imagination. The awesome part is that Kang-wu's ghost has a great sense of humor - he shows up when they are having sex, sleeping, taking a crap, everything. And he is always wet - like a pale, little, wet Steve Buschemi, and smiling. He shows up right between them in the middle of sex in one scene that made me laugh so hard my intestines dropped. Tae-ju then feels really guilty about killing her husband and asks Sang-hyun, who is a passive vampire feasting on bags of blood instead of killing people, to kill her...which he does, then he remembers how awesome the sex was, so he decides to turn her into a hot little mass-murdering vampire.
It is at this point the the movie actually turns into a vampire movie... sort of. For some reason, Korean Vampires do not appear to have fangs, but they appear to be quite devious and really like killing. Tae-ju, unlike the cowering Sang-hyun, does all the awesme stuff I would do as a Vampire - flies from rooftop to rooftop, kills tons of people, and does not care about anything. And she gets really hot.
One scene I particularly like involved Tae-ju wandering out into the middle of a Korean highway, getting hit by a speeding car, then when the terrified motorist attempts to give her aid, she guts him and drinks his blood. DEATH-TACULAR!!!! It is like they took Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, added some Bram Stoker's Dracula and 9 1/2 weeks, stirred it in a pot, and poured it into my DVD player. If the movie started at this point - it would get my highest praises.
Anyways, our vampire lovers re-paint Kang-woo’s house this crazy, surreal white and blue, have the Mah-jong group over to play, and Lady Ra (the stupid incapacitated bitch) figures out how to communicate with people and points out that Tae-ju and Sang-hyun killed her son, which of course gets everyone killed as Tae-ju goes on a hilarious, insane killing spree with their guests that she and Sang-hyun feast on immediately after. Sang-hyun then realizes they are totally screwed and should run away. Tae-ju just wants to kill more people, but eventually agrees. Sang-hyun drives them out to a field, also with the invalid Lady Ra - I guess so she can watch their demise. The two sit on the hood of their car in a touching moment awaiting sunrise, and eventually burn up as vampies will do when the sun hits them. Yay. Too bad Tae-ju did not double cross Sang-hyun and escape to murder and have sex with the rest of Pyongtaek.
Overall, surprisingly, I liked this movie, despite it's unfortunate continent/nationality choice. The first half of this very long movie features a lot of overly emotional nonsense and moves very, very slowly. But the movie really picks up in the second half with lots of killing and sex and, actually, comedy. It explores some moral issues and actually has an underlying meaning. It has a much different look and feel to it than the first half. There is some brilliant camera work in this film and some inspired creativity giving a definite twist to the vampie genre.
Outside of the enraging subtitles that do not always make total sense, they for some reason have all the women do that annoying little girl laugh/giggling thing...ALL THE FREAKING TIME!! The only time I want to hear little girls giggling is right before they get their freaking heads chopped off. If you watch this movie, do not expect it to be a classic vampire tale, but instead, expect an original story that is very well made... with quite a bit of sex. I give this movie 4 dangling eyeballs; if it had started at the 95 minute mark, it would have gotten 5.
I hope you enjoyed my review. You better well have; it took a lot of time away from my orpan-slaying and chain smoking. I am going to re-install my intestines and torture some bunny rabbits. Until next time my little fiends...
laz |
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GUEST REVIEWS:
Rated on: June 3, 2010 3:06pm by Mister MistThirst left me a little parched.
I too feel the story couldn’t decide on itself. Like the lengthy Han River, it snaked round and round, visiting various places and ideas until finally letting out to the daybreak of the Pacific.
Similar to the crazy mourning scene from The Host, this film is not without its wacky moments of “What the H just happened to the serious film I was watching?” though in Thirst they are much subtler. Having been exposed to a considerable amount of Korean film both in the country and here in the states, these odd lapses of seriousness don’t bother me and I’ve even come to look forward to them.
One way or another, horrific story of morality (a priest wrestling with his vampirism) or a bitterly fated tale of love (vampire falls for a psychotic childhood crush), I wish this film had been much more concise and decisive. Still a beautifully shot, acted, and edited film.
Rated on: May 30, 2010 11:40am by flaskmasterSome friends and I watched Park Chan-wook’s "Thirst" the other night. When it was over, there was a lively discussion about how it compared to the director’s earlier, more successful monster movie, "The Host", and how it fit in with the group’s experiences with Korean cinema in general. Someone finally noticed me sulking in the corner, and I made the mistake of giving an honest answer to the question, “So, what did you think, Ian?”
I said that "Thirst" is not as good as "Sex and the City 2".
Take a moment. Digest. Leave if you need to.
I consider "Sex and the City 2" a terrible movie. Its characters are awful; their predicaments are ridiculous; and the movie so studs its moral compass in black diamonds as to render it useless. But "SATC2" is consistent, and it contains just enough schadenfreude to be periodically entertaining. Thirst, on the other hand, is a movie that begins with a solid premise and devolves into a two-plus-hour mess devoid of tone, purpose or a single relatable character.
Kang-ho Song stars as Sang-hyeon, a priest who volunteers to work at a modern day leper colony (though not technically leprosy, the patients suffer massive internal and external blood blisters that gradually eat their bodies). A recent crisis of faith has compelled him to commit suicide, though that same faith forbids him from doing so; working with lepers, it seems, is a happy medium. He succumbs to the virus, and despite a blood transfusion, Sang-hyeon dies. Moments after the doctors declare him dead, however, he jerks back to life.
Word of his miraculous recovery spreads and he becomes a local sensation. People from all over bombard him with prayers for help, including the mother of an ailing childhood friend, Kang-woo (Ha-kyun Shin). Sang-hyeon is invited to play Mahjong with Kang-woo’s family, and game night becomes a weekly event. Over time, the priest becomes smitten with Kang-woo’s wife, Tae-ju (Ok-bin Kim); she’s spunky and dissatisfied, and is attracted to him despite his being covered in bandages and pulsating sores.
Yes, Sang-hyeon still has that pesky blood disease, but he discovers that the sores dissipate whenever he drinks human blood. He also discovers that he can fly and hear microscopic mites crawling on his arm. It seems the transfusion at the leper colony turned him into a vampire.
The first half hour of "Thirst" has great forward momentum. I dig the idea of a Catholic priest becoming a vampire, and all the possibilities of that premise. I can even accept the love story as a further complication, and see how it could tie everything together. But Park and co-writer Seo-Gyeong Jeong make the fatal "Batman and Robin" mistake of piling on more and more peripheral crap, to the point where the audience forgets what it was they were supposed to focus on in the first place.
In addition to the priest vampirism and love story, we’re presented with Tae-ju’s beating at the hands of Kang-woo; a plot to murder Kang-woo; the introduction and abrupt dismissal of Kang-woo’s ghost; the revelation that Tae-ju was lying about being beaten; Sang-hyeon’s murder of Tae-ju; Sang-hyeon’s resurrection of Tae-ju as a vampire; and Tae-ju’s undead killing spree.
Oh, we’re also treated to sub-plots involving Sang-hyeon’s blind, paraplegic bishop mentor’s desire to become immortal; a recurring comatose patient who serves only as the priest’s main source of food; Kang-woo’s grieving mother who lapses into a coma, and who becomes Sang-hyeon and Tae-ju’s house pet after witnessing Tae-ju’s death and rebirth; the execution of the Mahjong club; and lots and lots (and lots) of awkward, violent sex thrown in for flavor.
That may sound like the worst six-week-long HBO miniseries you’ve ever heard of, but Park Chan-wook crams it all in to two hours and thirteen minutes. That’s fifteen minutes less than "Sex and the City 2", but it feels like seven hours. This is mostly due to the terrible editing and lack of transitions. The scenes pop so awkwardly that I felt like I was missing key moments in between; which is weird, since Park spends so much time on the sweaty, panting, wholly un-erotic sex scenes and no time explaining things like, say, why in the hell Sang-hyeon would bring his psycho ex-girlfriend back to life. Thirst goes on forever and has more climaxes than a Sasha Grey gangbang; I can count at least four moments when I thought the movie was (mercifully) coming to an end, but then proceeded to flop clumsily about for another twenty minutes.
My opinion of "Thirst" may be blasphemy to the legions of Park Chan-wook devotees; no doubt I just don’t “get” his work, and my lack of appreciation for the quirks of South Korean movies has blinded me to the director’s genius. That’s possible, but my rule of thumb regarding foreign films is that if a movie wouldn’t work in English, it’s not a good movie. If you were to replace the cast of "Thirst" with American actors, and change nothing else, it would still be awful. I love foreign films precisely because, in my experience, they tend to be more adult than their Hollywood counterparts. This movie is just silly, confused, and boring.
It’s also very derivative, which I find nearly unforgivable. Can we just agree—collectively, as film lovers—that the whole vampire-with-a-conscience thing is over? Between "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Twilight", "The Vampire Diaries", and now "Thirst" (and, I’m sure, scores of other low-rent pop), we’ve had more than a decade of sullen pretty-boy vampires who refuse to kill people. They serve only to eat up valuable plot time with bullshit moral dilemmas, and the stories always resolve with them killing someone anyway. So either we need to demand fiction in which a vampire holds true to his/its vegetarianism, or insist that the trend die altogether.
There’s also a good stretch of "Thirst" that—ahem—pays homage to Clive Barker’s "Hellraiser". Be it the creepy-bandaged-man-who-drinks-blood-to-heal-his-concealed-wouds motif or the woman-who-seduces-and-murders-strangers-to-feed-herself/her-boyfriend storyline, Thirst outright copies sequences from the 1987 horror classic; yet somehow managed to make me yawn through all of them (Thirst also rips off a popular 80s TV miniseries about a priest falling in love, but is not nearly as exciting as the pitch, “It’s 'The Thorn Birds' meets 'Hellraiser!'” would suggest).
This is the rare film of which I would welcome a Hollywood remake. I can just see some hot-shot twenty-something screenwriter stripping out all the filler and turning "Thirst" into a lean, ninety-minute vampire movie with fantastic gore and an actual love story. With a simple polish by, perhaps, Christopher Nolan—to add pathos and a clear message regarding the whole priest/vampire conundrum—you might have something special. For now, though, we’re stuck with Thirst, a movie more in love with itself than "Sex and the City 2"—and that’s saying something.
Rated on: February 23, 2010 9:23pm by erzulie"Vampires are cuter than I thought". This is said by the heroine of "Thirst, a flick that brings a new take to an old story. It's an erotic, mad love story, a thoughtful examination of faith and sacrifice, and is pretty funny. I realize that all that doesn't seem to go together, but it works. "Thirst" was a big hit in it's country of origin, Korea. It didn't get as much attention here as it deserved, but I suppose a subtitled, Korean vampire love story is a hard sell for most people.
"Thirst" is about a saintly priest, Sang-hyun, who only wants to do good. He volunteers to help find a cure for a new, deadly virus. He wants to save lives, and prays to suffer without relief, renouncing all human comfort as an offering to God. He has remained chaste all his life, and boy, is he ripe for some temptation. He succumbs to the disease, receives a blood transfusion, dies, and within seconds after the time of death is announced, revives. The new vampire blood awakens in him all the urgent carnality he has sublimated all his life. His senses have been supersized, his skin starts sizzling when in contact with sunlight, and he needs to consume human blood or the virus starts to take over again. He does not want to kill anyone, so comes up with a novel solution. He visits the bedside of a comatose patient, unhooks the iv tubing, lies on the floor, and sucks the backed-up blood from the drip chamber. Kids, don't try this at home, it won't work. But it looks very cool. Our priest also becomes a winning mah-jongg player. Vampires are naturally talented at games? Who knew? Scrabble, anyone?
But the collision of his existence in flesh and his moral calling are too much for him to live with. He attempts suicide, but finds he cannot die.
When he meets the wife of an old friend, fleshly temptation kicks into high. She (Tae-ju) has a miserable life with her sickly husband. Her only release from this hellhole is to pretend to sleepwalk and run barefoot in the street - where she meets Sang-hyun one night. It is a lovely scene, romantic and weird. She is afraid and starts to run from him. He catches her, removes his shoes, and gently lowers her into them. Remember the shoes, they show up later. They meet in the room of Coma Man. He tells her that no one will come into the room all night, - gee, great hospital! The encounter is very tender and extremely hot. He tries to tell her that he did not choose his condition, that people do not blame you for having cancer or being in an accident. He just wanted to do good. He says that maybe vampirism is only like having different palates, or biorhythms (I love that!).
To save her, Sang-hyun drowns her husband. But instead of loving happily ever after, they are tormented with guilt and the ghost of her very dead, very soggy husband. After Tae-ju taunts and attacks Sang-hyun, he kills her, realizing that he is indeed a murderer and no longer a priest. He feeds on her, then brings her back to life by feeding her his blood. Now, Tae-ju is a vampire without remorse. She kills and feeds whenever and on whoever she wants. Sang-hyun is still trying not to harm anyone, and feeds on stolen blood from the hospital, or drinks the blood of wannabe suicides. She asks him, if they give it to you what is the fun in that? I suppose she has a point. But, Sang-hyun sees her humanity and their love slipping away and realizes that he can no longer tell himself that he is an innocent who is trying to help people. He drives them both out to a deserted cliff overlooking the sea. Tae-ju joins him on the hood of the car to await the sunrise. He tells her that he only wanted to be with her forever, but that it will now be in hell. I have to say, I have never seen people immolated in a more romantic way. The last we see, she has put on his shoes (remember them?) and they fall to the ground with her charred feet.
Interestingly, well to me, the movie is based on the novel, "Therese Raquin" by Emile Zola. It is remarkably faithful to the book...except for the priest stuff....and the vampire stuff. The moral? I don't know. Maybe it's the realization that one's humanity is more precious than immortality. Or, maybe just that an eternity of mah-jongg, even if you always win, is too unspeakably horrible to face.
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