If you read my stuff at all you likely already know how much I enjoy Korean movies. I find the inability to judge where a story is heading so satisfying. While I am sure many of you already knew i would say this: Korean movies tend to do a much better job at keeping us guessing as to what will happen next much more so than western movies.

Director Park Chan-wook is truly gifted and is the director of many of my favorite Korean films such as Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Joint Security area. I can't put my finger on exactly what he does correctly and since I don't have a professional background in film, all I can really say from my layman's eyes is that I just really enjoy the way he shoots films. He has fantastic vision and perhaps that is why he is one of most celebrated directors in Korea, if not the world.

Not one to stick with conventional plotlines, Park Chan-wook takes us down a path in "Thirst" that we wouldn't normally travel down in the vampire genre. To be honest when i found out this was going to be a vampire movie I actually put it on hold for a while because I feel as though it's been done far too many times (it's in the trailer and kind of obvious by the name of the film - so I am not spoiling.)

The strangest part of this (and this happens in the first 6 minutes of the movie and is also in the trailer, so again, not spoiling,) is that the main character, Sang-hyun (played by the immensely talented Song Kang-ho) is a devout Catholic priest that ends up accidentally becoming a vampire because of his volunteer work through the church. He, obviously upon learning that he is undead, has a relatively massive crisis of conscious about what he must do in order to survive.

What makes this movie so special is that Song Kang-ho and lead actress Kim Ok-bin (who plays Tae-Ju) performances are so amazing in that the both of them, and i would say especially Kim Ok-bin, have to display such a wide array of emotions throughout the duration of the movie. The two of them really impressed me with their incredible versatility as they transition from depression, to rage, to lust in such a quick amount of time. However, unfortunately, most of the other actors in the film are pretty average.

I didn't like the inclusion of a several unnecessary English speakers in the movie because the dialogue that takes place when they are on-screen is just kind of uncomfortable since it is quite obvious from his few lines in English that Song Kang-ho doesn't speak English at all, nor does he understand it.

The inclusion of Filipino movie star Mercedes Cabral as a supporting actress hopefully happened because the producers wanted to try to get people in the Philippines to watch this, because I can't think of a single reason why it was necessary for her character to be from abroad. All of her dialogue is in English towards people that respond to her in Korean and her husband never speaks to her in anything but Korean. It doesn't make sense. That is really my only gripe about this film other than the fact that it is a bit long. However, i say that even though at the end of it I wanted the movie to keep going.

I whole-heartedly recommend this movie to anyone who can handle a little bit of gore. It isn't the central theme but some of it can be a bit much for the more sensitive people out there. It is also quite sexually graphic so don't watch this with your parents / kids.