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Thirst

Bakjwi

United States, South Korea

2009

133 Min
Color
2.35:1
English, French, Korean
  • Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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DIR Park Chan-wook

EXEC Miky Lee

PROD Park Chan-wook, Ahn Soo-Hyun

SCR Seo-Gyeong Jeong, Park Chan-wook, Émile Zola

DP Chung Chung-hoon

CAST Song Kang-ho, Kim Ok-bin, Shin Ha-kyun, Kim Hae-suk, Park In-hwan, Oh Dal-su, Young-chang Song, Mercedes Cabral, Eriq Ebouaney

ED Kim Jae-beom, Kim Sang-bum

MUSIC Cho Young-ook

Cannes (In Competition): Jury Prize, São Paulo

Synopsis

Sang-hyun is a beloved and admired priest in a small town, who devotedly serves at a local hospital. He goes to Africa to volunteer as a test subject in an experiment to find a vaccine to the new deadly infectious disease caused by Emmanuel Virus (E.V.). During the experiment, he is infected by the E.V. and dies. But transfusion of some unidentified blood miraculously brings him back to life, and unbeknownst to him, it has also turned him into a vampire. After his return home, news of Sang-hyun’s recovery from E.V. spreads and people start believing he has the gift of healing and flock to receive his prayers. From those who come to him, Sang-hyun meets a childhood friend named Kang-woo and his wife Tae-ju. Sang-hyun is immediately drawn to Tae-ju. Tae-ju gets attracted to Sang-hyun, who now realizes he has turned into a vampire, and they begin a secret love affair. Sang-hyun asks Tae-ju to run away with him but she turns him down. Instead, she tries to involve Sang-hyun in a plot to kill Kang-woo… —Cannes Film Festival

Director

Original

Park Chan-wook

A versatile stylist with an aesthetic that straddles the line between the idiosyncratic and the mainstream, Park Chan-wook is best known for his 2000 film Joint Security Area, a powerful story about a murder along the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea that became the biggest box-office hit in the history of Korean cinema. (It was later supplanted by the action film Shiri, which also dealt with North-South relations.) Park’s interest in film began in college at Sogang University, where he started the “film gang” club and published a number of critical studies on contemporary cinema. After graduating from the Department of Philosophy, he began working in the film industry as an assistant director to Gwak Jae-young on A Sketch of a Rainy Day (1988). In 1992, he directed his first feature, The Moon Is…the Sun’s Dream, a gangster drama, and shifted gears into comedy with 1997’s Trio, a romp about three pals on the run from the law. Neither of these films gained much recognition… read more

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Harry Rossi

11May12

Absolutely fantastic. Park Chan-wook proves once again he's a master of his craft. This film is extremely entertaining, gorgeously shot and with two fantastic lead performances to boot. Among the best vampire movies I've ever seen. Loved it. Can't wait for Chan-wook's next movie!

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Mike

27Apr12

Chan-wook Park balances thematic clarity with wild originality. He never allows sporadic shifts in tone to take control in a negative way. Instead, he finds cohesion in the mayhem and turns out a powerful, unique piece of work. Technically pristine.

Madeleine Elster and 2 others like this

DT, Kevin T

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Mathias Palmberg

4Mar12

The best Therese Raquin adapation you´ll ever see!

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Tigrane

12Feb12

Oldboy blew me away when I saw it, and this one is truly wonderful. This young South Korean cinema amazes me with their epic sense of beauty, passion, exacerbated romanticism and horror.

micah van hove likes this

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Fans

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Articles

Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.
W184

"The Sun," "The Exiles," criticWIRE

By David Hudson on November 17, 2009

Who doesn't love the full-page grid in each issue of Film Comment tabulating ratings from eight critics for two dozen or so newish films? Whether

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The Auteurs Daily: Summer Looks to Fall

By David Hudson on July 31, 2009

Though they surely didn't intend it, when Warner Bros moved the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to the dead center of the

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Cannes 2009: Sucking Zola ("Thirst," Park)

By Daniel Kasman on May 15, 2009

Here is the ideal Park Chan-wook film: one man and one woman beat and torture one another, each one having a go until the other is so badly

read article

Lists

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Reviews

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Fail

By Benoît on May 19, 2011

Le dernier film de Park Chan-wook évoque un vampire devenant amoureux d’une femme. Le postulat de départ peut être intéressant sauf que le cinéaste s’égare totalement au fur et à mesure que le film…  read review

The Bandaged Saint … Bakjwi [Thirst]

By jaredmo​barak on January 2, 2010

Definitely not for everyone, Bakjwi [Thirst] is an interesting, intelligent take on the vampire genre. By using this horror film affliction, director Chan-wook Park weaves a parable on religion and…  read review

Untitled

By Hunter Duesing on November 21, 2009

Park Chan-wook is proving himself more and more to be up there with David Fincher in terms of great innovative stylists and storytellers working in film today. THIRST is a movie bursting with themes…  read review

Untitled

By Adam DiPiazz​a on November 19, 2009

After hearing extreme reactions on both ends of the spectrum for Thirst, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it not only is a great film, but is almost as good as the films in Park’s Vengeance Trilogy…  read review

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Bakjwi (Thirst) - Park Chan-wook Discussion

21 posts by 10 people over 2 years ago