Thirst (2009 film)
Encyclopedia
Thirst whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...
) is a 2009
2009 in film
The year 2009 saw the release of many films. Seven made the top 50 list of highest-grossing films, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that as of this year, their Best Picture category would consist of ten nominees, rather than five .- Highest-grossing films :Please note...
horror
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
/drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
, written, produced and directed by Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. One of the most acclaimed and popular filmmakers in his native country, Park is most known for his films Joint Security Area, Thirst and what has become known as The Vengeance Trilogy, consisting of...
. It is loosely based on the novel Thérèse Raquin
Thérèse Raquin
Thérèse Raquin is the title of a novel and a play by the French writer Émile Zola. The novel was originally published in serial format in the journal L'Artiste and in book format in December of the same year.-Plot introduction:Thérèse Raquin tells the story of a young woman, unhappily married to...
by Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
. The film tells the story of a priest—who is in love with his friend’s wife—turning into a vampire through a failed medical experiment. Park has stated, "This film was originally called 'The Bat' to convey a sense of horror. After all, it is about vampires. But it is also more than that. It is about passion and a love triangle. I feel that it is unique because it is not just a thriller, and not merely a horror film, but an illicit love story as well." It is the first mainstream Korean film to feature full-frontal adult male nudity (but not the first-ever commercially-released South Korean film to do so: that distinction goes to the 2006 film No Regret
No Regret (film)
No Regret is a 2006 South Korean film and the feature film directorial debut of Leesong Hee-il, based on his earlier short Good Romance...
). The film won the Jury Prize
Jury Prize (Cannes Film Festival)
The Jury Prize is an award presented at the Cannes Film Festival. It is chosen by the jury from the 'official section' of movies at the festival. It is considered the third most prestigious prize at the film festival, after the Palme d'Or and the Grand Prix....
at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
2009 Cannes Film Festival
The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 13 to May 24, 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. It was announced on March 19, 2009, that Pixar's film Up would open the festival...
.
Plot
Sang-hyun is a Catholic priest who volunteers at the hospital, providing ministry to the patients. He is well respected for his unwavering faith and dedicated service, but he secretly suffers from overwhelming feelings of doubt and sadness.Sang-hyun volunteers to participate in an experiment to find a vaccine for the deadly Emmanuel Virus (EV). Although the experiment fails disastrously and Sang-hyun is infected with the seemingly fatal disease, he makes a complete and rapid recovery after receiving a blood transfusion.
News of his marvelous recovery quickly spreads among the devout parishioners of Sang-hyun’s congregation, and they begin to believe that the man has a miraculous gift for healing. Soon, thousands more people flock to Sang-Hyun’s services. Among the new churchgoers are Kang-woo, Sang-hyun’s childhood friend, and his family. Kang-woo invites his old friend to join the weekly mahjong night at his house, and there, Sang-hyun finds himself attracted to Kang-woo’s wife, Tae-ju. Suddenly, Sang-hyun relapses into his illness; he coughs up blood and passes out. The next day, he wakes in dire need of shelter from the sunlight. He has become a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
.
At first, Sang-hyun feels a new-found vigor and is energized by his insistent bodily desires, but soon he is aghast to find himself drinking blood from a comatose patient in the hospital. After attempting to kill himself, Sang-hyun finds himself irresistibly drawn to the taste of human blood. To make matters worse, the symptoms of EV return and only seem to go away when he has drunk blood. Desperately trying to avoid committing a murder, Sang-hyun resorts to stealing blood transfusion packs from the hospital.
Tae-ju, who lives with her ill husband and over-protective mother-in-law, Lady Ra, leads a dreary life. She is drawn to Sang-hyun and his odd new physicality, including his inability to resist his desires. The two begin an affair, but when Tae-ju discovers the truth about Sang-hyun’s new lifestyle, she retreats in fear. When Sang-hyun pleads with her to run away with him, she turns him down, suggesting that they kill her husband instead.
When Sang-hyun's superior at the monastery requests some vampire blood so that his eyes may heal and he may see the world before dying, Sang-hyun flees his position at the monastery. He moves into Lady Ra's house so that he may secretly be with Tae-ju.
Sang-hyun notices bruises on Tae-ju and assumes her husband is the cause, a suspicion she sheepishly confirms. Sang-hyun decides to kill Kang-woo during a fishing trip with the couple. He pulls Kang-woo into the water and claims that he placed the body inside a cabinet in a house at the bottom of the lake, putting a rock on the body to keep it from floating to the surface.
A police investigation ensues. Sang-hyun claims that Kang-woo became drunk, fell out of the boat, and drowned on his own. Lady Ra drinks herself into shock after her son's death, sinking into a completely paralyzed state
Locked-In syndrome
Locked-in syndrome is a condition in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. Total locked-in syndrome is a version of locked-in syndrome where the eyes are paralyzed as...
. In the meantime, Sang-hyun and Tae-ju are haunted by terrifying visions of Kang-woo's drowned and bloated corpse suddenly appearing in their bed, in a cabinet in the basement, and between the two of them during sex. When Tae-ju lets it slip that Kang-woo never abused her, Sang-hyun is enraged because he only killed Kang-woo to protect Tae-ju. Teary-eyed, Tae-ju asks Sang-hyun to kill her and let her return to her husband. He obliges by snapping her neck, but after feeding on her blood, he decides he does not want to be alone forever and feeds her corpse some of his own blood. She awakens as a vampire. Lady Ra, knocked to the floor by a seizure, witnesses everything.
Tae-ju quickly shows herself to be a remorseless monster, killing indiscriminately to feed, while Sang-hyun acts more conservatively, not killing unless he has to. Their conflicting ethics result in a chase across the rooftops and a short battle. Some time later, Lady Ra manages to communicate to Kang-woo's friends, through blinking and scratching characters into the table with the one finger she is capable of moving, that Sang-hyun and Tae-ju killed her son. Tae-ju quickly disposes of two of the friends, and Sang-hyun appears to eliminate the third.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Sang-hyun tells Tae-ju that they must flee or be caught and found guilty of multiple murders. Before leaving with her, he makes a visit to the camp of worshipers who consider him the miracle EV survivor. He appears to rape a girl, leading the campers to chase him away with rocks and sticks, no longer idolizing him.
Sang-hyun then places Lady Ra in his car, and with Tae-ju, drives into the night. Back at the house, the third friend (apparently not killed by Sang-hyun) gets up and escapes. Upon waking up from a nap in the car, Tae-ju realizes that Sang-hyun has driven to a desolate field with no cover from the imminent dawn. Sang-hyun snaps the key off in the ignition and throws it into the ocean. Realizing his plan to have them both burn when dawn breaks, Tae-ju tries to hide in the trunk, an attempt that is foiled when Sang-hyun rips the trunk lid off and throws it, also, into the ocean. She then attempts to hide under the car, but Sang-hyun pushes it off her. Resigning herself to her fate, she joins him on the hood of the car, and both are burnt to ash by the sun, all as Lady Ra watches from the back seat of the car.
Cast
- Song Kang-hoSong Kang-hoSong Kang-ho is a leading South Korean film actor.- Career:Song Kang-ho never professionally trained as an actor, beginning his career in social theater groups after graduating from Kimhae High School...
as Sang-hyun - Kim Ok-binKim Ok-binKim Ok-bin is a South Korean actress. Kim made her debut in an online beauty contest in 2004, and began her acting career with a role in 2005 film Voice. Subsequent appearances include the television drama series Over the Rainbow and films such as Dasepo Naughty Girls and The Accidental Gangster...
as Tae-ju - Shin Ha-kyunShin Ha-kyunShin Ha-kyun is a South Korean actor. He first trained as a stage actor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, before transitioning to film and gaining national fame with his role as a North Korean soldier in Joint Security Area...
as Kang-woo - Kim Hae-sook as Lady Ra, Tae-ju's mother-in-law
- Eriq EbouaneyEriq EbouaneyEriq Ebouaney is a French film actor. He is best known for his portrayal as the Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the 2000 film Lumumba, as "Blacktie" in Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale and as "Ice" in the 2008 action film Transporter 3 in which he starred opposite Jason Statham.-Early...
as Immanuel - Hwang-woo Seul-hye as Girl with a whistle
- Mercedes Cabral as Evelyn
- Song Young-Chang as Seung-dae
- Oh Dal-suOh Dal-suOh Dal-su is a South Korean actor. He has played many crime-related roles, such as Mr.Park the owner of the organized crime funded private jail in Oldboy and a former gang boss in Mapado . He plays a semi-comic part as a weapons smuggler in A Bittersweet Life...
as Young-du - Choi Hee-jin as Nurse
- Ra Mi-ran as Nurse Yu
- Choi Jong-ryeol as Old man
Reception
Thirst received generally favorable review from critics on its original release. The film ranking website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reported that 82% of critics had given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 92. At Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 73, based on 21 reviews.
Prominent film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
awarded Thirst three out of a possible four stars, citing that the director was "today's most successful director of horror films." The website IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
awarded the film three and a half out of five stars and said "Thirst may not be the greatest vampire movie ever made, but Park's willingness to try something different makes it a decidedly fresh take on the genre."
Box office
The film earned ₩South Korean won
The won is the currency of South Korea. A single won is divided into 100 jeon, the monetary subunit. The jeon is no longer used for everyday transactions, and appears only in foreign exchange rates...
1,174,224,500 on its first day of release and gained more than ₩5,612 million on that three-day weekend. On May 3, Thirst debuted at number one at the South Korean Box office and grossed ₩6,786,388,000 with more than 1 million tickets sold nationwide.
DVD release
Universal Studios Home Entertainment released a region 1 DVD of Thirst on November 17, 2009. No extras are included, but the film was produced in anamorphic widescreen with Korean DD5.1 Surround audio and subtitles in English, English SDH, French and Spanish. The director's cut, running 145 minutes, has been so far released in Korea only, on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.External links
- Interview with Writer/Director Park Chan Wook at The Korea Society