Bakjwi (Thirst) (Chan-wook Park, South Korea, 2009)

This is a vampire story set in the Far East. A tale full of sound and fury. It concerns a Roman Catholic monk, who takes part in a medical trial that has to do with a dangerous infectious disease. At a given moment he is given a blood transfusion. The blood is vampire's blood. This affects him physically (he gets super human powers, as long as he drinks blood) and mentally (he gives in to the joys of sex). However, he does not kill to get blood. Then he commits the mistake of sharing his own blood with the woman he has fallen in love with and she turns into the archetypical vampire who is prepared to kill to get the blood she needs. This is both their undoing. It is a fast paced story that does not bore the spectator for a second. As acknowledged in the credits quite a few plot elements come from Emile Zola´s novel Thérèse Raquin (1867).