The fact that this Korean vampire film from the director of the celebrated ‘Vengeance Trilogy’ was awarded the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2009 might suggest that we are entering vampire delicatessen territory (rather than the average fast-food offerings). Thirst appears in the cinemas when the prints of Let The Right One In are still fresh, and just before another wave of teen-targeted vampire releases hits our screens. Park Chan-Wook’s film promises a refreshing new take on this most abused of horror subgenres, but, sadly, the exoticism of the settings and the stylish camera work can’t disguise the lack of originality of a plot that sometimes feels as if it will never reach its conclusion.

The film’s main character is a priest who volunteers for an experiment which aims to cure a deadly virus. Unexpectedly, he turns out to be its only survivor; infected with vampire blood during a transfusion, he becomes one of the living dead, although appearing as a miracle man to the average citizen. When the priest meets the frustrated, repressed wife of a childhood friend, the film turns into an intimist and highly eroticised drama, then into a film noir, before reaching a crescendo of unnecessary surrealism that is likely to cause much watch-staring and foot-tapping.

The priest-turned-vampire is a promising, if hardly original, starting point, one which has populated role-playing games, fan fiction and short stories and films for a very long time. The combination of sex- and death-drives under a clerical collar has long been a fertile breeding ground for fictional works with apocalyptic undertones, from Clint Eastwood’s Preacher in Pale Rider to Buffy’s Caleb, Carnivale’s Brother Justin, Preacher´s Jesse Custer or the narrator in Nick Cave’s Tupelo. There is nothing apocalyptic about Thirst, though. The film’s focus is rather the internal struggle of its main character, but it soon stumbles and loses its drive. Oddly, given that its starting point is clearly the desire to address complex existentialist themes, Thirst works best as a black comedy. Park Chan-Wook certainly delivers some beautiful cinematography, but he fails to create script compelling enough to unify the otherwise excellent performances and stylish looks on display.