Thirst

Saw Thirst, a Korean vampire movie. A priest volunteers for an immunology experiment which en-vamps him. The film is most interested in his increasingly compromised morals. At first he decides he would rather die than feed on blood, then rationalizes it by only taking, like, a little blood. Soon he is killing people and contemplating taking on a bride because, as ever, there is a dame. The broad outlines of the plot are fairly boilerplate but the details are very interesting.

I definitely get the sense that something is going on but I'm not sure just what. For example, in the beginning of the film, he councils a suicidal nurse to seek god's love in antidepressants (these are his exact words, if the subtitles are to be trusted.) Later, he seems to be pushing a wheel-chair-bound man but it turns out the man's wheelchair is motorized. The priest is unnecessary. Clearly something is being quietly said about faith and science, but I'm not sure if one has supplanted the other or are they working in harmony. Then again, the priest contracts the vampirism from a lab which is essentially a science temple. I don't know.

The film also involves a lot of purposefully messy plot-points and other allusions. There is a cult which worships the priest as a risen-again saint, a weekly mahjong game, a blind priest, and a paralyzed mother. The priest is seen enforcing his vow of chastity by slapping his thighs with a flute (it makes more sense in the film, I assure you) and the dame is revealed to have been abused by her husband who stabs her in her thighs. When they have sex, breaking the priest's vow, it is on Easter Sunday, a Christian celebration of Jesus rising from the dead, but also a pagan fertility festival. Post-coitus, the dame eats an egg. Many times the priest is symbolically linked to Jesus. Perhaps an argument for the antichrist could be made?

I may be reading too hard into the film, but it seems so deliberate sometimes. Perhaps this film is more allusive than evocative. Perhaps the references were added in afterward just to arbitrarily stitch things together, to provide a little maze for symbol-hunters? Anyway, although the film is not terribly original it is well-made, fairly funny in parts, and artistic. It was interesting enough that I spent most of the time looking for coherence in the references, rather than being annoyed.