Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a fantasy,
horror film from 2009, titled Thirst. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
Sang-Hyun is a priest who volunteers at the local hospital, providing prayers,
an ear for confession, last rites, and even some songs played with his flute. However he
feels like he isn't doing enough: people keep dying of EV every day and he can only watch,
so he asks Father Roh, a blind priest superior to Sang-Hyun to send him to the labs where they are
experimenting to find a vaccine. Roh doesn't like the idea, nobody doesn't know what truly is going
on in those laboratories and the Vatican doesn't approve of them, but he gives in after Sang-Hyun
explains how important it is for him. When he arrives at the labs, Sang-Hyun is told of all
the possible horrendous side-effects that he may go through while being part of the experiment,
but Sang-Hyun isn't scared and gives his consent to proceed. He spends his days in the labs playing
the flute, reading, praying, writing letters, and playing volleyball with the other volunteers.
A month later, his body is covered in blisters, and one afternoon, Sang-Hyun ends up vomiting
blood in his room. He's immediately taken to the emergency room and given a transfusion, but the
doctors' efforts are pointless: Sang-Hyun dies on the table. However, after he's covered with
a sheet, the doctors are surprised to suddenly hear him pray: somehow, after his heart stopped,
Sang-Hyun is still alive and his blisters are gone. Six months later, Sang-Hyun leaves the
labs to return to his congregation, and lots of people are waiting for him at the door. The news
of his recovery has spread and everyone believes him to be a miracle for being the only survivor
of the experiment among five hundred volunteers. He travels with his entire body bandaged up and
stays that way while going back to his duties as a priest. It isn't until he goes to see the doctor
that he takes them off, and the doctor confirms he's healed incredibly fast. Sang-Hyun still
notices some differences in his body though: he's become strangely sensitive to sound and smell,
which makes him feel dizzy and nauseous, but those aren't symptoms of EV. Sang-Hyun starts
being known as the Bandaged Saint, and people come to him believing he may heal them. One afternoon,
he's approached by Mrs. Ra, who wants him to come and see her son, Kang-Woo, who is very sick.
When he goes to the hospital to offer his prayers, Sang-Hyun realizes he knows these people:
he used to be friends with Kang-Woo when they were kids. There's also Tae-Ju, who Sang-Hyun
thought was Kang-Woo's sister, but actually, she was a kid that was abandoned at Mrs. Ra's house,
so she took her in and raised her. Nowadays she's married to Kang-Woo, although she doesn't
look very happy about it. Some days later, once Kang-Woo is feeling better, Sang-Hyun is invited
over for dinner, and can't help feeling a little nauseous when he smells some blood: unknown to
him, Tae-Ju is on her period. Three other friends are also invited: Seung-Dae, a retired cop;
Young-Du, and his wife Evelyn. They spend the evening chatting and playing Mahjong, although
Sang-Hyun can't stop watching Tae-Ju, especially when her husband grabs her to tickle her and
accidentally drops her on the floor. She almost slaps him for it, but instead, she leaves the
building and goes out for a run while barefoot. Once the night is over and everyone leaves, Tae-Ju
watches her husband sleep and pretends to stab his mouth with her thread scissors over and over.
Meanwhile, Sang-Hyun returns to his place, but he doesn't go to bed until he's hit himself
with his flute enough times to make up for the sinful thoughts he's been having about Tae-Ju.
The smell of his own blood makes him nauseous, and suddenly he starts feeling dizzy as well,
overwhelmed by all the sudden sounds he is able to hear until he passes out on the floor.
The next morning, he's woken up by the sensation of the sun burning his skin, so he decides to hide
in the wardrobe until night falls. Hours later, once it's dark outside, Sang-Hyun comes out and
discovers his body is covered in blisters again, so he has to bandage himself up to go to the
hospital. There, he gives his blessings to a dying woman and touches her as he does so, accidentally
getting blood on his fingertips that he can't help licking. Not being able to take it anymore,
Sang-Hyun visits a patient that is in a coma next and drinks his blood directly from his IV tube.
This cures his blisters and allows him to take the bandages off again, it also means he doesn't need
his glasses anymore. Scared by what he's becoming, he jumps off the window and lands on top of a car,
but he's still alive and unhurt. On his way back home, he comes across Tae-Ju, who couldn't sleep
and has gone out for another barefoot run. She tries to run away when she sees him,
but he quickly catches up with her and picks her up to put her in his shoes.
Then he quickly goes away, not wanting to succumb to the temptation of her veins.
The next day, Sang-Hyun has to wait for night to fall again before visiting Father Roh and asking
for his advice. He proves he's a vampire now by making a cut on his chest and letting Roh insert
his hand to touch his heart, and that cut closes and heals as soon as Roh takes his hand out.
Sang-Hyun doesn't know what to do with these new urges he's going through, and Roh helps him by
letting him drink from his arm. Sang-Hyun begins to go to every Mahjong night at Mrs. Ra's house.
One evening, when Tae-Ju is about to go running barefoot again, Sang-Hyun stops her,
and she takes the chance to give him back his shoes. She explains that she runs to get the
feeling of getting away from the hell that is her household and that she's been waiting for him to
rescue her since they were kids. Before he can stop himself, Sang-Hyun kisses her and the two
of them get down on the floor to try to reach home base, but they're interrupted by Mrs. Ra,
who orders Tae-Ju to come back to take care of her husband and slaps her when she takes too long.
A couple of days later, Tae-Ju begins working as a volunteer at the hospital on Sundays, which is
the day Sang-Hyun works there too. She waits for his mass to be over and together they find a room
where the only patient is in a comma, so nobody will find them while they use one of the beds to
get to know each other better. After they're done, Tae-Ju wants to know how their relationship will
progress, so Sang-Hyun decides she should know the truth now before she makes any decisions,
but instead of telling her, he shows her what he is by drinking the comatose patient's blood.
Tae-Ju freaks out and runs back to her house, but Sang-Hyun follows her and enters the building
through the bathroom window, cornering her there. He promises her that he hasn't killed anybody and
says that being a vampire shouldn't be different from having any other kind of illness before
picking Tae-Ju up to take her away with him into a better life. But when he's about to jump off
the window with her in his arms, he accidentally kicks off the toilet lid, getting the attention
of Mrs. Ra, so Sang-Hyun runs away alone before he's discovered. Tae-Ju watches him leave and
notices how he's capable to break a street light in two with his super strength. The next day,
Sang-Hyun is at the hospital, filling some bottles with the comatose patient's blood when he receives
a call from Tae-Ju, who wants to know how a person can become a vampire. A few hours later, they meet
on the roof of the hospital and Sang-Hyun proceeds to show her all his powers, like healing himself
after drinking blood, breaking a coin in two, and jumping from roof to roof with her in his arms.
While carrying her around, Sang-Hyun notices some wounds on Tae-Ju's thighs and assumes Kang-Woo is
mistreating her, which she confirms. But when she goes back to her place later,
Kang-Woo is surprised to see these wounds too and expresses his concern for her, thinking it was a
patient with mental health issues that attacked her. Meanwhile, Sang-Hyun visits Father Roh,
who tells him he should go back to the lab and ask for a cure. This is sadly impossible because such
a long trip would expose Sang-Hyun to sunlight, so Father Roh asks him to give him some of his
blood instead then. He wants to be a vampire to be able to see again before dying, but Sang-Hyun is
so disgusted by this that he decides to renounce his vows and flee from the monastery. Mrs. Ra
accepts giving Sang-Hyun a place to stay and he's given a mattress to put down in the basement,
although he quickly replaces it with a wardrobe which he uses as if it was a coffin. Now he and
Tae-Ju can secretly meet down there more often, and Sang-Hyun keeps asking Tae-Ju to run away
with him and become a vampire, but Tae-Ju refuses because she knows Mrs. Ra will leave the house and
her business to her. Kang-Woo begins noticing that Tae-Ju isn't in bed with him during the night,
so Mrs. Ra installs a door fastener on Kang-Woo's bedroom and locks the couple there every night.
This causes Tae-Ju to start stabbing her thighs with her thread scissors while Kang-Woo sleeps,
and the smell of her blood is enough for Sang-Hyun to leave the basement and enter her room through
the window. He sees her wounds and the scissors on the floor and assumes Kang-Woo did it so
he tries to kill him, but Tae-Ju stops him. This doesn't mean she doesn't want him to do it though,
they just need a better plan. Some days later, Sang-Hyun, Tae-Jun, and Kang-woo go fishing in
a prohibited area. While Kang-Woo is busy with his rod, Sang-Hyun jumps on him and
drags him into the lake to drown him. Kang-Woo struggles in the water, trying to get out,
but Sang-Hyun drags him back down until he cannot breathe anymore. Once Kang-Woo is dead,
Sang-Hyun returns to the boat and hugs Tae-Jun to celebrate her newfound freedom, but their
enthusiasm causes them to accidentally flip over the boat and Tae-jun falls to the water as well.
The police and an ambulance arrive shortly afterward, and they take an unconscious Tae-Jun
away while Sang-Hyun jumps back into the lake carrying a giant rock that he puts on top of
Kang-Woo's body after hiding it inside of a sunk cabinet to keep it from floating to the surface.
After answering the police's questions, Sang-Hyun goes to see Father Roh to confess what he's done,
but all Roh cares about is becoming a vampire, so Sang-Hyun kills him with his own Swiss knife
and proceeds to drink his blood. Then he wraps up the body and puts it in his car,
driving it all the way to a cliff to toss the body far into the ocean.
The police can't close the case until they find the body, and Tae-Jun starts having hallucinations
of Kang-Woo appearing around her. The death of her son affects Mrs. Ra so badly that she starts
drinking until she sinks psychosomatically into a completely paralyzed state. With her mom paralyzed
and her husband gone, Tae-Jun allows Sang-Hyun to sleep in her bedroom, and now they can spend even
more time together, which is harder than it sounds because they are now both having hallucinations
of Kang-Woo taking revenge on them. Days pass and Tae-Ju keeps taking care of her paralyzed mother,
applying her make-up, washing her, and taking her out in her wheelchair so she can have some fresh
air and sunshine. One afternoon, Young-Du visits her alone because Evelyn is on a trip, and brings
Tae-Ju some money, claiming no woman should be alone before trying to take advantage of her.
Tae-Ju kicks him and tries to escape, but Young-Du grabs her and forces her to stay and please him.
By the time Tae-Ju finally gets to leave night has fallen, and she comes across Sang-Hyun on the
streets, who gets unhappy when he smells Young-Du on her body. Some days later, Tae-Ju and Sang-Hyun
buy a cake and celebrate Mrs. Ra's birthday. Remembering that her mom never celebrated
her birthday, Tae-Ju slaps Mrs. Ra, and Sang-Hyun slaps her in return for disrespecting her mother.
Tae-Ju wonders who he thinks he is to hit her like that and accidentally lets it slip that Kang-Woo
had never hurt her, which enrages Sang-Hyun because that's the only reason why he agreed to
kill him. Tae-Ju disagrees and after saying she's sure he would've killed him anyway because of
jealousy, she goes to cry to her mother about how scared she is, pretending to be a victim as well.
Mrs. Ra may be paralyzed, but she can still move her eyes and hear everything is being said in
front of her, so now she knows their little secret. After Tae-Ju accuses him of cursing
her family, Sang-Hyun gets even angrier and hits Tae-Ju, tossing her to the side.
Mrs. Ra starts convulsing then, so he gives her CPR until she calms down, and Tae-Ju uses
that chance to run into another room. However, it's easy for Sang-Hyun to catch up with her
and capture her, deciding to listen to her pleas and kill her so she can reunite with her husband.
Crying over what he did, he hugs Tae-Ju and starts drinking her blood, but when he notices
Mrs. Ra watching them, guilt and regret take over him. There's only one thing he can do now:
feed Tae-Ju with his own blood and transform her into a vampire too. Now the couple spends
the day together inside Sang-Hyun's wardrobe in the basement and comes out during the night.
While Sang-Hyun keeps himself busy painting the living room completely white to remember sunlight,
Tae-Ju prepares Mrs. Ra's meals, one of which ends up having a drop of her blood in it when
Tae-Ju accidentally cuts her finger. But one drop is still enough for Mrs. Ra to start moving one
of her fingers after eating. The police are still on the case of Kang-Woo's death, and
one day they call Tae-Ju and Sang-Hyun to answers some questions while connected to a lie detector.
The two of them pretend they're only acquaintances that barely know each other, so when they're done,
Sang-Hyun takes the car and Tae-Ju takes a taxi so they don't raise suspicion. But Tae-Ju can't
help herself any longer, so she ditches the cab and calls one of the cops to ask him to pick her
up under the excuse she has something to confess. When the officer finds her in the middle of the
road, Tae-Ju kills him, takes him to the woods, and drinks his blood before burying him there.
When she returns home, Sang-Hyun tastes the blood on her lips and guesses she's
been killing indiscriminately. He tells her off for it, reminding her he's supposed to
be bringing blood from donors to feed them both without having to become murderers.
As Sang-Hyun chases her from roof to roof, Tae-Ju tells him she doesn't like his methods,
she thinks killing people is more fun and the blood tastes better when drunk directly from
the body. When she tries to break up with him, Sang-Hyun grabs her and drops her on the floor,
hurting her while he reminds her she's the only thing he has in this life.
He still refuses to let her kill people to drink however. After a couple of days,
blisters begin to appear on Tae-Ju's body and she can't drink donated blood because she vomits it,
so Sang-Hyun decides to call the hospital doctor and ask him to come over for a check-up.
This means Tae-Ju feeds on him while Sang-Hyun tries to ignore the guilt that haunts him, but
soon a distraction arrives: it's their friends, who have come over for Mahjong night. After hiding
the doctor's body, the couple welcomes their friends, and together they have a fun night as
usual, that is until they make a discovery: Mrs. Ra can say "yes" or "no" by blinking.
She also shows them she can move her finger and starts pointing at Mahjong pieces with letters on
them - this together with the blinking allow her to communicate to their friends the truth behind
Sang-Hyun and Tae-Ju: they were the ones that killed Kang-Woo. Knowing what's going to happen
next and not wanting to see it, Sang-Hyu leaves the room as Tae-Ju begins chasing her guests to
kill them. However, guilt soon takes over, so he helps Evelyn hide in the closet before trying to
stop Tae-Ju, but she chokes him and drops him on the floor before going back to hunting. Seung-Dae
and Young-Du both get killed and Tae-Ju feeds on them until their necks don't drop any more blood.
Sang-Hyun explains to her that this is because their hearts aren't pumping anymore,
so she should cut their feet and hang them in the bathtub to let gravity do its thing.
While they chat, Evelyn is in the kitchen, tied to a chair, but she manages to drop herself on the
floor and grab a knife that fell earlier. After freeing herself, she goes after Tae-Ju and stabs
her with the same knife, but this of course does nothing. Sang-Hyun pretends to feed on and kill
Evelyn while Tae-Ju is looking for a bigger knife so that she won't hurt her, then he tells Tae-Ju
that they need to leave the house before the cops arrive. They get in the car and bring Mrs. Ra with
them, only stopping once by the camp of people that believed in the Bandaged Saint so Sang-Hyun
could feed on a woman for real. Then he spends the rest of the night driving while Tae-Ju sleeps,
making it to the middle of the countryside right before the sun is about to come out.
When Tae-Ju wakes up and notices there's nowhere to hide because she's stuck between an open field
and a cliff, she freaks out and begins looking for a method not to die to the sun. She can't
drive away because Sang-Hyun has broken the key, so she tries hiding in the trunk, but Sang-Hyun
tears off the lid and throws it into the ocean. Next, she tries hiding under the car itself,
but Sang-Hyun just moves it away. When she finally gives up, the couple sits together on the hood
of the car and wait for the sun to burn them away while Mrs. Ra watches them die from the backseat.