Thirst

From Tv Tropes

Current revision as of 02:32, 10 May 2012

Template:Spoiler needed Thirst is a 2009 horror/drama film directed by Park Chan-wook, best known for JSA and his Vengeance Trilogy.

The film follows Sang-hyun, a Korean Catholic priest who contracts vampirism during a medical experiment. Still motivated by his strict religious upbringing, Sang-hyun commits himself to feeding through non-harmful means. Soon, however, he bows to his increasingly powerful urges and becomes infatuated with Tae-ju, the Cinderella-like wife of a childhood acquaintance. Sang-hyun soon begins making moral concessions to get closer to Tae-ju, who turns out to be much more dangerous than he could have imagined.

Not to be confused with the novel Thirsty, since they're both about thirsty vampires.

This film contains examples of

• All Girls Want Bad Boys: One way to see Tae-ju: first she wanted Sang-hyun from when she knew him as an orphan (not the best element), and then a vampire. To be fair, she doesn't hesitate to corrupt him while in his priestly cloaks.
• And I Must Scream: Lady Ra.
• Asshole Victim: Tae-ju's "adoptive family" probably deserved whatever came their way.
• Back from the Dead with a healthy dose of Came Back Wrong. Doctors that used a deadly disease, and then witnessed his death, seem to not have too much problem with this or letting him back into the general population.
• Bad Ass: Sang-hyun after his transformation.
  • Took a Level in Badass
  • Badass Longcoat: His priestly outfit make him a lot more badass after he starts flying in it and displays how long it is.
• Berserk Button: Don't hurt Tae-ju.
• Beware The Nice Ones: Sang-hyun.
• Big Screwed Up Family.
• Blood From The Mouth:
  • Blood pours out of Sang-hyun's mouth as he plays the flute just before he dies of the EV disease. Of course, he doesn't stay dead. It happens again later when he experiences another resurgence of the disease.
  • Tae-ju's mouth pours blood when Sang-hyun crushes her throat. He licks the blood off of her chest until deciding to turn her.
• Brother Sister Incest: The philosophically type between Tae-ju and her husband. They're said to have grown up together under the same mother (which even implied to have taken as her daughter), then made to be married by the mother.
• The Corruption: Vampirism gradually corrupts Sang-hyun and turns him very close to outright evil.
• Evil Feels Good: Large point of the movie.
• Evil Is Cool.
• Evil Matriarch: The stepmother.
• Femme Fatale: Tae-ju, who seduces Sang-hyun, convinces him to murder her husband and turn her into a vampire, then turns into a gleeful killer.
• Foot Focus: Tae-ju's feet are a "running" theme. She sprints barefoot through the streets at night for a brief moment of escape from her mundane life, growing thick calluses. Sang-hyun's first romantic action towards her is to physically place her in his shoes. He also pays particular attention to her feet during their lovemaking sessions. Sang-hyun's shoes get a bittersweet callback at the end of the film.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Sang-hyun does his best not to kill anyone. He takes blood from a comatose patient he believes would have given his blood freely to the hungry. He also provides peaceful suicides.
• Hemo Erotic: Tae-ju is being literally eaten during a sex round with Sang-hyun and actually asks outloud if this makes her a pervert.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Tae-ju's adoptive mother has a moment like this... before her breakdown and hospitalization and after her son's disappearance. Tae-ju's husband may also count as this.
• Madness Mantra: Sang-hyun recites what seems almost a self-curse during his time of sickness and dying (note that he's also into self-flagellation). A group of people, mistaking this for a Survival Mantra that gets you in God's graces, start reciting it around him...
• Make It Look Like an Accident: I was all alone with him in the boat, and I swear he was drunk. And he can't swim.
• Momma's Boy: Oh God...
• Murder The Hypotenuse: To be fair, Tae-ju wanted to escape from her husband one way or another for years. But when Sang-hyun enters the scene...
• My Beloved Smother: Lady Ra dotes on Kang-woo, who always seems to be ill.
• Never Found the Body: Tae-ju's husband.
• Not So Different: After Sang-hyun confronts Tae-ju about framing Kang-woo so Sang-hyun will kill him, Tae-ju claims that Sang-hyun would have gone through with it any way.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Lady Ra does this with Tae-ju listening. Tae-ju is not impressed.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Well, not much really. Except that now, Sang-hyun can infect people with vampirism and EV, he adheres to stereotypical eastern vampirism tropes:
  • Blood Lust.
  • The Virus: Averted: transformation into vampires without the will of the feeding vampire is apparently impossible; feeding directly from the veins or having sex does not transmit it, either.
  • Vampire blood can heal your infirmities and illnesses, but only so long as you're full of it. Vampires don't grow fangs, but they can still suck blood from bite wounds. They're super-strong and almost totally immune to damage, but do have the typical weakness to sunlight. Sang-hyun also briefly flies.
• Riddle For The Ages: Sang-hyun seems to believe that he got a transfusion of vampire blood in Africa. How vampire blood came to be in an African hospital is never explained, nor does Sang-hyun make any attempt to find out.
• Selfish Good, Selfish Evil: Movie draws the line clear: Good must be modest, ready to dedicate their life to God and helping others, while anyone who's selfish is either very evil, or on the way to becoming that.
• Shout Out: Seems to have several:
  • The Music Dissonance, the parody of rural life and other themes are similar to Kusturika's movies.
  • The blind father being offered blood for giving redemption.
  • Twilight parody may fit as a tagline.
  • Sang-hyun's Madness Mantra.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Sang-hyun becomes famous as "the bandaged saint" after miraculously surviving EV. A small group of followers camp outside his monastery, to his great annoyance. In the end he pretends to try to rape one of them so that they'll abandon their vigil.
• Unfortunate Implications: Borderline retarded people make bad jokes with their wives, suck in bed, are physically weak, probably the only way they'll ever get laid or married is if their mothers adopt a girl from the age of three and force her to marry them, and still live with their mothers when they're married and over 30. Being a Korean movie, it may be a case of Values Dissonance.
• Villainous Breakdown: As much as you want to consider lady Ra a villain.
• Weakened By The Light: Sang-hyun gets burned.
• Wham Line: "Kang-woo ca swim." Though that was a Red Herring.
  • "Kang-woo never hit me."
• Wicked Stepmother: A subversion. Lady Ra is tough on Tae-ju, but during a drinking session she reveals that she does care about Tae-ju and plans to put the family business in her name. Tae-ju makes Sang-hyun believe that her family is much worse than they really are.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Tae-ju pretends she's being abused by her husband to get rid of him. It works... for a while at least.