31 Days of Horror: Thirst
Click to view...I don't know how I feel about this.
It's from the director of the Vengeance trilogy (and I haven't seen Oldboy yet, but Lady Vengeance OMG) and it is, without a doubt, beautiful to look at. I'm sure the acting was very good, although I can't always judge that when I don't understand the language. And I thought the way it ended was powerful, but also pretty funny.
But it was SO. LONG. It was two hours and thirteen minutes, which is long but not that long, but somehow I felt like I was watching it for a week.
It probably doesn't help that it was all about sex. I know some people feel that metaphors for "deviant" sex are inherent to the vampire genre, and I don't mind sexy vampires, but...the concept has always been kind of boring to me. God knows, all the fantasizing about vampires I did as a kid and a teenager had nothing to do with losing my inhibitions and awakening my inner sex fiend. My fantasies were power fantasies.
And I feel like Tae-Ju was after power rather than sex, but her power was all bound up in sex in that her sexual power over Sang-Hyun was the only power she was ever able to exercise. And then Sang-Hyun's arc was all about sex and sin and temptation. And I'm just...way more interested in his desire to help people as a priest and a doctor while avoiding the temptation to eat them than I am in his attraction to a married woman and his inability to stop himself from breaking his vows. But I did love (from a writer's point of view) the way she manipulated his savior complex.
So there's a lot of sex. And a sex scene has to be either really kinky or really awkward to be interesting to me. As it turns out, extramarital bloodplay with a virginal priest doesn't meet the requirements unless [something]
her recently murdered husband literally
comes between them.
So. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the characters, which is almost certainly intentional. And I had trouble keeping track of who some of the side characters were, which is also a problem I had with Lady Vengeance. I'm not saying that Korean people are too similar for me to tell apart or anything. I'm saying not a lot of the characters got proper introductions.
My favorite scene: When Tae-Ju mocks her husband and all but broadcasts that she's having an affair, under the guise of playing mahjong.
My rating: 4/5. Based on my own enjoyment, I would have given it three stars, but it was well made enough to deserve more.