Vampires seem to be all the rage today, theaters, TV and just about every book store out there. You just can’t get away anymore and while they’ve been here for a very long time, it’s only recently that blood-suckers become so popular with mainstream audiences.

Today we’ll take a look at the top 10 most successful vampire movies at the box office in North America. Now we all know what will be found at the top, but I always say the journey is more important than the destination so if you’re not a Twilight fan just enjoy this up to the #5 spot.

10. Underworld: Evolution (2006) $62.3 million – There’s a very good reason why I chose North American box office instead of worldwide and it involves Underworld: Evolution. This top 10 would look about the same with a very important difference, Blade: Trinity would be 10th and I wanted an Underworld film here (since we already have two other Blade flicks). The original 2003 Underworld was a well made genre flick that managed to blend vampires and werewolves in a modern Romeo and Juliet story. If there ever was a Twilight equivalent for guys, this would probably be it. Underworld: Evolution was a worthy sequel that took the series in a somewhat different direction (leaving Romeo and Juliet behind). Underworld: Awakening, the 4th film, is set to open in just 2 months.

9. Blade (1998) $70 million – A few months back I wrote a series of posts about superheroes and there I gave Blade credit for being the movie that made Hollywood studios have faith in superheroes again. Without the original Blade, Marvel Studios would not be the same today. The fact that he’s a kick-ass half-vampire, half-human, vampire hunter is just a bonus and for me personally, a damn good enough reason to watch Blade again.

8. Blade 2 (2002) $82 million – A bit more visually impressive thanks to director Guillermo del Toro, Blade 2 is a great sequel followed by a not so great 3rd part (Blade: Trinity) that managed to kill the series.

7. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) $82.5 million – If you have even the slightest interest in vampires and you haven’t seen this movie yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Unless you’re a 13 year old girl, when you think vampires, Dracula comes to mind and for good reason. According to Wikipedia, as of 2009, around 217 films featured Dracula in a major role. The version we’re talking about here was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins and Keanu Reeves among others.

6. Interview with the Vampire (1994) $105.2 million – Based on the novel written by Anne Rice and published in 1976, this is among the best vampire movies out there. Starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, a very young Kirsten Dunst, and Antonio Banderas, this is one flick you don’t want to miss. Adjusted for inflation, Interview with the Vampire would have over $200 million today.

5. Van Helsing (2004) $120.1 million – This is not a good movie, not much else you need to know here. If you were lucky enough to skip this back when it came out then I envy you and know that you haven’t missed anything.

4. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011) $139.5 million (so far) – If you absolutely hate Twilight there’s not much else for you here (just skip to the end), everyone else, keep reading. As you probably know this movie just came out so the number shown above is an opening weekend estimate. Later today the actual numbers will come out and then I’ll write a full report, explaining in more detail what $139.5 million (or more) actually means for this series and box office in general.

3. Twilight (2008) $192.7 million – One might say that the vampires featured in this series are a joke to real blood-suckers. Fortunately there are no real vampires out there so at the end of the day credit must be given to the movie that turned a niche genre into a mainstream phenomenon.

2. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) $296.6 million – No matter how much one hates this series, there are things that just can’t be argued. You don’t grow $100 million in just a year unless your movie really has something going. It might not be aimed at everyone but it definitely hits the right chords with its target audience.

1. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) $300.5 million – It takes a lot of strength for a movie to reach a ceiling like this series did and manage to remain up there. Like it or not, when it comes to box office this is as close as a studio has ever got to a Harry Potter-like hit.

Before I close, there are a few vampire movies out there that maybe came out a very long time ago when tickets were a lot cheaper or just never managed to catch a big enough audience, so I feel that I have to at least mention them here. An obvious choice is the 1931 Dracula starring the late Bela Lugosi, simply a must see for every vampire fan out there. The original 1985 Fright Night as well as the 2011 remake should also be seen, in that order if possible. Then there’s the Swedish masterpiece Let the Right One In (2008) and trust me, you need to see this. Finally, while not a particularly great film, it was definitely a big hit back in 1979. Adjusted for inflation, Love at First Bite would have $139.1 million today.

I probably missed more than a few great ones so feel free to comment below and name your favorite vampire movie.

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About 4 of the 117 minutes that make up The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 will capture your attention.  Those 4 minutes are nearly ruined, too, when someone opens their mouth; which ends up being a frequent, and indirectly funny, occurrence.

The story is quite simple in this installment: Vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) and human Bella (Kristen Stewart) are finally getting hitched.  Everyone is happy about this.  Even the werewolf, Jacob (Taylor Lautner) seems to be cool with it, despite his eternal hard-on for Bella.  That is until he learns Bella wants Edward to try to impregnate her prior to changing her to a full-blown vamp (apparently that’s not good).  So Jacob then continues his pouting and the on-going supernatural cock fight for the average & boring looking girl rages on.

While on the honeymoon at a secluded island off the shores of Brazil, Edward reluctantly honors Bella’s wishes to try to give her a child.  He worries though (seems that’s all he does in these damn flicks) that the “fetus” may be something no one has ever seen or dealt with before, therefore, harming Bella.  Well, the virile vamp pulls it off which leads to Bella having dire complications; sparking a possible breach of the treaty between the Cullen clan and the Werewolves.

Sorry Twi-hards, this installment sets the franchise way back and now deserves the clichéd ribbing many people do when talking about this product.  This is easily the worst film in the now four picture franchise.  Improvements were being made with each sequel.  New Moon proved that this adapted story from Stephenie Meyer’s popular novels could in fact be cinematical.  And Eclipse’s totality as a feature length film changed a lot of hater’s minds including yours truly.  The direction that Breaking Dawn took, well, took all the life out of the series.  Sure the loyal will eat this crap up, but chances are they are force feeding themselves (i.e. willing their mind & heart to like it).

The screenplay is handled like a romantic-comedy without any rhyme or reason.  Serving shallow dialogue all around and having the characters mock themselves just isn’t working here.  And the choice of a soundtrack is way out of place, for the tone of what this should have been (dramatic) is confused as the director and performers.  Based on the material given here, Pattinson and Stewart are sadly unable to carry this movie as they are asked to do.  Taylor Lautner enters and tries to anchor this down, but the most intriguing character is also hampered with more terrible dialogue and piss-poor timing.  No one has evolved and that’s kind of the point of a progressing story.  And there is no help from the supporting cast as they are given nothing to do except act – which in this case translates to stand and look concerned – as a warm (and cold) body count (I’m Team Jasper by the way).

So that 4 minutes mentioned above happens in the last 15 minutes, involving a brief werewolf and vampire clash outside the Cullen house.  Right before that sequence, there’s a decent dramatic pitch with Bella going into labor.  As stated before though, just when they’re on the path to passable filmmaking, someone opens their mouth and the direction goes to hell.  The only thing that could have improved this piece is having Beavis and Butt-Head sitting on a couch providing sarcastic commentary (you’re welcome Mike Judge).

One thing that is noteworthy is this particular flick tackles and depicts some mature situations.  There’s an awful amount of time dedicated toward the Edward & Bella honeymoon – a.k.a. vamp baby-making.  Let’s just say they are suggestive scenes that mainly see Kristen Stewart prancing around in quasi-sexy lingerie and tastefully having sex with Mopey the vampire.  So perhaps a chat with your teenage daughter may be warranted after this.  That is, if this installment doesn’t completely turn them off.

If one can overlook the bad acting and lazy story, what this product really needed was a solid edit.  I’m all for a movie taking its time but lingering on superficial scenes that fail to dial up any emotion and/or have a purpose is literally laughable.  By doing so, this direction plays – and projects – something resembling the spoof nature of Vampire Sucks rather than what one saw in the previous two Twilight sequels.

Overall, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 is dead on arrival.  In sequel terms, this represents a B-movie horror flick that continues to spawn more installments that debut on the SyFy channel.  And that’s never a good thing, kids.  Everyone has gone backwards here, losing the momentum that Eclipse fought hard to attain.

And if you’re still into this – which is to say you enjoy subpar filmmaking and stories – be sure to stay after the credits for a teaser.

RATING:  1 out of 5 

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Quite a decent offering we’ve got this weekend, four new entries, all able to draw a decent audience under normal circumstances. We’ve got sports drama Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, family adventure Dolphin Tale and action movies Abduction and Killer Elite. So, how will each one of this perform against The Lion King? The answer should be right after the break.

I have to be honest, I’m not quite sold on the box office power of Moneyball, at least not enough to declare it a clear winner against The Lion King 3D. The later has had great legs through the week so I’m positive it will have a good hold. On the other hand, Moneyball has been a long time coming, at one point having Steven Soderbergh attached to direct. Today what we have is Brad Pitt (who’s been on this for years), Jonah Hill and Philip Seymor (working with director Bennett Miller again after Capote 6 years ago). Now sports dramas in general, with the exception of the Rocky series, The Blind Side and a few others, have never been big hits at the box office so I don’t expect things to change with this movie. I’m going to say $22 million for Moneyball, maybe enough for 1st place.

The Lion King 3D has a 50/50 chance to take the top spot again, depending on how much business Dolphin Tale steals from it. You see, 2 years ago Sony released an 3D animated flick called Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs around the same time. That movie opened ridiculously similar to The Lion King 3D so obviously I’m going to base my prediction on how that movie performed on its second weekend. Thing is Cloudy had half the weekday numbers The Lion King has so it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the 3D remastered version could potentially finish north of $25 million over the weekend. Thing is Cloudy didn’t have another 3D family movie in its second week so I’m going to say The Lion King 3D makes $21 million for 2nd place.

Dolphin Tale, the second new movie of the week, comes from Warner Bros in not as glorious as it once was 3D. Having the most theaters (3507) out of all the pictures released today, the studio is definitely expecting something north of $15 million. Given the great reviews it’s getting (86% on Rotten Tomatoes right now) I won’t be surprised if it opens with $17 million for 3rd place.

Abduction is the third movie that comes out today and Taylor Lautner’s first true box office test. We already know he’s had great success in the Twilight Saga or with an ensemble cast in Valentines Day, but can he replicate that with Abduction? Sorry fans out there but I’m thinking no. That being said, it would be ridiculous to expect that same level of success out of an utterly mediocre action movie like Abduction. Still, he should be able to pull in a good $12 million or so for 4th place.

For the last spot in the top 5 we have no less then three movies fighting, namely Contagion, Drive and new entry Killer Elite. The former stars Jason Statham, Robert DeNiro, Clive Owen and Chuck‘s Yvonne Strahovski. A $10 million opening might be enough for this since I doubt it was all that expensive to make (and if it was, well tough luck). Contagion and Drive should both gross around $7-8 million.

Next week we don’t get a break cause we have yet again four movies. Cancer drama/comedy 50/50, romantic comedy where Anna Faris gets naked again called What’s Your Number, Daniel Craig and wife Rachel Weisz amnesia thriller Dream House and christian cop drama Courageous from the same guys that brought us the christian fireman drama Fireproof.

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This is genius. Daniel Radcliffe, next seen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, will be making a guest appearance in an upcoming episode of The Simpsons but he will not be playing himself nor Harry Potter. Instead, Radcliffe will be voicing Edmund the vampire, a clear spoof of Twilight and Robert Pattinson’s character Edward Cullen.

Spoiler TV got the first image of the character, which you can see above.

The episode, titled Treehouse of Horror XXI will air on Fox in the US on November 7th. Here’s the synopsis for the episode:

Beware of ouija boards, vampires, and unexpected guests in the 21st annual installment of the “Treehouse of Horror.” In “War and Pieces,” the first of three spine-tingling tales, Marge (Julie Kavner), worried about the effects of excessively violent video games, encourages Bart (Nancy Cartwright) and Milhouse (Pamela Hayden) to give wholesome, classic board games a shot. The best friends discover that board games aren’t boring after all when they find themselves playing a real-life game in which they must beat all the challenges before they are allowed to return to home.

The supernatural spells continue in “Tweenlight,” when Lisa (Yeardley Smith) becomes smitten with a mysterious new student, Edmund (guest voice Daniel Radcliffe), who also happens to be a vampire. When a romance blossoms, the young lovers run away to Dracula-la Land, leaving Homer (Dan Castellaneta) to come to Lisa’s rescue.

In the final frightening fable, “Master and Cadaver,” Homer and Marge set sail on a romantic second honeymoon, but are interrupted when they rescue Roger (guest voice Hugh Laurie), a castaway who escaped an attempted poisoning on his ship. Convinced that Roger is sabotaging their getaway and plotting a murder of his own, Homer and Marge take matters into their own hands.

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Despicable Me managed to stomp every prediction regarding its opening by over-performing beyond expectations and reaching $56.3 million when it wasn’t expected to pass $40 million. Surprises like this make things interesting at the box office.

For a movie that cost $69 million and coming from newborn animation studio Illumination Entertainment (I have a feeling we will continue to see good things coming from them in the future under Universal’s distribution deal), this is a pretty darn good score, so good that it passed previous highest grossing computer animated flick distributed by Universal Pictures, The Tale of Despereaux (with $50.8 million) in just 3 days. With Toy Story 3 still making the rounds and holding a lot of the 3D screens, makes this performance all the more impressive. So, Despicable Me 2 (bad title, I really hope it won’t be this) coming out in 2013?

Also strong was The Twilight Saga: Eclipse with $31.7 million (that I totally called) down only 51.1% from last weekend (an all time best for the series, obviously helped by the fact this one opened on a Wednesday instead of a Friday). With $239.7 million so far (including Monday numbers) in 13 days, Eclipse is neck a neck with New Moon, $237.8 million after the same amount of days. I believe now more then before that this one might pass the $300 million mark in North America. Oh, and for those wondering, Eclipse stands at $458.7 million worldwide with the movie still not out in a lot of countries.

Predators performed exactly as expected (called it again), $24.7 million and a great debut for this R-rated genre movie that I can’t wait to watch. Hopefully it will at least show decent holds at the box office, good enough to carry it past the $60 million mark before the end of its run. Also, second best opening for the series (first if we leave Alien vs Predator out).

As mentioned above, Toy Story 3 is still rolling the big bucks, this time $21 million for $339.2 million so far and if we include the $2.8 million it did on Monday, this just became Pixar’s highest grossing movie ever in North America (not adjusted for inflation, obviously) beating former champ Finding Nemo ($339.7 million). $555.1 million worldwide and it has barely scratched the surface internationally. $900 million definitely a strong possibility, $1 billion not out of the question either.

The Last Airbender, $16.6 million, $101.8 million so far (including Monday) and going down, maybe not as fast as expected but still fast enough to keep it from reaching $140-$150 million.

Grown Ups keeps making twice as much as Knight & Day ($15.8 million versus $7.7 million) on a weekend basis with Swiss precision while the Karate Kid also continues to dominate The A-Team in the battle of the 80′s ($5.3 million versus $1.7 million).

Finally Cyrus ends the top 10 with $1.2 million after expanding from 77 to 200 theaters this weekend.

Next weekend is looking even more interesting with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Inception, my money is on Inception but more on that soon.

For a more detailed look at the top 10 numbers for last weekend, go here.

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It was a good weekend at the North American box office with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse leading the pack.

Eclipse, ahem, eclipsed the others and managed a $64.8 million opening weekend. Now that might seem a little small compared to what Twilight and New Moon did ($69.6 million and $142.8 million) but the real story here is Eclipse actually opened on Wednesday and has made since (weekend included) $176.3 million in 6 days (Monday included). So if we look in perspective, it’s pretty much in line with what New Moon made ($178.8 million in 6 days).

Add to that another $100 million from the few international markets Eclipse opened in and you’ve got a very impressive $276.5 million worldwide for a movie that cost about $68 million. I expect this to finish with around the same numbers as New Moon, maybe a bit more, $300 million or so in North America and another $450-$500 million from the rest of the world for what could become the first movie in the Twilight series to reach $800 million worldwide. Keep hitting that iron while it’s hot Summit Entertainment, as long as you keep making stuff like Red, I can take all the Twilight movies you can push.

Next in line is The Last Airbender (formerly Avatar: The Last Airbender) based on the popular (actually very popular by looking at the numbers) animated series of the same name. This one, despite some of the worst reviews of the year, managed to open with $40.3 million over the weekend, but again, just like with Eclipse, the number might seem small but in reality they are bigger because this opened on Thursday to $17.5 million and went on to make $69.3 million in 5 days (Monday included). Will this drop like a rock next weekend and just barely match the $150 million budget Paramount invested in it? We’ll just have to wait a few more days.

Toy Story 3 is in third place after 3 weeks with $30.2 million (again, smaller number because the 4th of July fell on Sunday) and has made so far $301.8 million in 18 days matching Shrek 2 ($302.6 million in 18 days) as the fastest animated movie to pass $300 million (7th overall). With $150.8 million from the rest of the world so far (not having opened in most of the big markets yet) Toy Story 3 has generated $452.6 million worldwide. I can see this last entry in the series gettingt to $400 million or so in North America (and probably finish the year in first place if Harry Potter doesn’t have something good to say in 3D) and as high as $900 million and even $1 billion worldwide. First Alice in Wonderland, now this, having two movies pass 1 billion in the same year would be something Disney can only dream of.

From this point on everything is pretty standard, Grown Ups made $19 million for $77.6 million and will surely be another $100+ million Adam Sandler movie, Knight & Day did $10.4 million and $45.7 million so far while Karate Kid keeps on giving (to Sony and the Smith family) with another $8 million that adds to $151.5 million for Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan.

The A-Team, Get Him to the Greek, Shrek Forever After and Letters to Juliet (making a comeback) finish the top 10.

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Long time no see but my final exams have kept me away from writing here in the past weeks. Well now I’m back, hopefully in full force and just in time for the release of what is certainly going to be one of the biggest hits of the year, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

This time, while trying to estimate the weekend for each of the top 5 movies at the box office, I will cheat a little since the releases of the week opened already, Eclipse on Wednesday and The Last Airbender on Thursday, and I have those numbers. So how is the weekend going to look then?

Well The Twilight Saga: Eclipse has had a tremendously successful opening day ($68.5 million) that ranks as the second highest ever (The Twilight Saga: New Moon opened to $72.7 million just 7 months ago) and is also the widest release in history with 4416 theaters ready to show the latest chapter in the vampire romance saga. Eclipse made another $24.2 million on Thursday for a total of $92.7 million so far in just 2 days. Now I expect around $75 million this weekend for the Stephenie Meyer novel turned movie, that should lead to around $168 million in 5 days, add to that equally high international numbers and Summit Entertainment got another phenomenal hit on their hands for a price tag of just $68 million, money well spent with this kind of return on investment if you ask me.

In the other corner going for a completely different demographic is The Last Airbender (previously Avatar: The Last Airbender) based on the very popular animated series with the same name. M. Night Shyamalan is back in the writer/director chair with his most expensive project yet and at the same time easily the most hated by critics standing at just 9% (94 rotten and only 9 fresh, but I still want to see it, simply out of curiosity, probably on DVD). Now what critics think of a movie doesn’t always mean much to the people that have to actually pay to see said movie, so The Last Airbender still managed a decent if not impressive (considering the bad press) $16.3 million in 3169 theaters. I’m guessing, similarly to Eclipse, this is going to be a frontloaded movie so it should slightly drop on Friday and maybe go up a little on Saturday and down (a lot) on Sunday since it is the 4th of July in the US. So $35 million for a 4-day opening of $51 million. Maybe not exactly what Paramount expected when they payed for this, but still a lot better then it could have gone (looke at Fox and Dragon Ball: Evolution).

The rest of the holdovers should do well since it is a holiday weekend and because the 4th of July is Sunday, Monday will be inflated so expect overall big number all around. Toy Story 3 might even pull a fast one on The Last Airbender and grab that 2nd place, actually I am counting on that.

1. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Sum) $75M ($168M)
2. Toy Story 3 (BV) $37M ($295.8M)
3. The Last Airbender (Par) $35M ($51.3M)
4. Grown Ups (Sony) $20M ($78.5M)
5. Night & Day (Fox) $10M ($45.3M)

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We saw 10 seconds of the teaser yesterday, and now Summit Entertainment has released the full teaser trailer for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Watch below:

In The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger as Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between Edward and Jacob — knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella is confronted with the most important decision of her life.

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Oh my god it’s happening again! Save yourselves! Summit Entertainment have decided to re-release Twilight into selected theatres again due to fan demand. For one night only on November 19th (the day before New Moon opens) fans will be able to see the film that launched this whole vampire and Robert Pattinson craze. According to Variety some places may offer discounted admission prices so if you’ve never seen Twilight now is your chance to see it on the cheap!

While I’m not a fan of the films this is quite a cool move by Summit, and studios should do this more often. Marvel should consider releasing Iron Man again a day before Iron Man 2 opens, and the same with other studios with upcoming sequels. The big screen will always be a better experiences even if you own the film on DVD and Blu-ray.

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I’m a sucker for vampire films (pun recognized, but not intended) and spend an unusual amount of time thinking about the origins of the mythological trope and the rules of the monsters that have resurged into the spotlight, only being outpaced by superheros in today’s pop culture landscape.

I’m willing to accept that this might give me a pre-bias for Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s newest thriller, Thirst, because it does vampire well. Thirst presents a vampire story where the monster isn’t the basis of the entire plot and when romance enters the fray, it’s not the central point of the story.

Twilight is a Mormon romance between an idiot little girl and a vampire who happened to be turned when he looked like Robert Pattinson. True Blood hinges on the premise that vampires have “come out of the coffin” and sets its action in backwoods Louisiana, which is visually fantastical in the first place, to lull you into the premise before going crazy with inter-vampire politics and an obsession with drawing out the rules of vampires (It’s season 2 and I’m still not sure what powers a vampire’s Maker has over his/her Ward). Twilight’s vampire love says “look but don’t touch” while True Blood’s all about the sucking & f*cking. Thirst plays like a fever dream in comparison.

Song Kang-ho plays the man-of-the-cloth, Sang-hyun, who genuinely wants to help save lives by exposing himself to a deadly tropical virus so he can be a guinea pig for a new, ineffective, vaccine. Of 500 godly subjects infected, he is the only one who survives the horrible last stage of the virus: violently puking blood. As he’s dying in the quarantined hospital, he’s given a transfusion of infected blood that brings him back to life.

Suddenly, he’s a man of Christ again; a healer of the sick. His boils and pustules from the virus begin to disappear and he’s reunited with a family from his past, the drunken Madame Ra (Kim Hae-sook) and her near-mentally handicapped son Kang-woo (Shin Ha-kyun). When Sang-hyun was an orphan being raised by monks, Madame Ra used to let young Sang-hyun play with her son. Also present in the household is Tae-ju (the talented Kim Ok-vin, who effortlessly swings from hurt and sexy to creepy and dangerous), an orphaned girl semi-adopted by Madame Ra.

Tae-ju is a lot like Cinderella from the first moments we see her; quiet, subservient and treated more like a pet or a nurse than a daughter. She has thick calluses on her feet from running aimlessly through the city at night, running from how trapped she feels. Madame Ra refers to her as a puppy and Tae-ju herself says she’s been the family’s dog for years.

To his horror, Sang-hyun discovers he needs blood to keep the deadly virus at bay, the healing factor of a vampire is the only thing keeping him undead. At first, he quietly feeds on a coma patient by sucking blood through an IV like a straw. One of his mentors, a blind and wheelchair bound monk lets him feed off his wrists occasionally. Sang-hyun also finds himself lusting after Tae-ju, an attraction she seems to return.

And that’s the summary of the first act, the titular Thirst takes over from there and takes the audience on a wild, twisted ride through the negative consequences of unbridled desire. Sang-hyun has dual thirsts, one for blood and one for sex with Tae-ju. His priesthood is quick to go as Tae-ju flirts with him. She thirsts for freedom from her suffocating life, but knows she can’t attain it while she’s in a forced marriage to Madame Ra’s retard child.

Throughout the beginning of the film, the plot lurches forward while Park and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon create an atmosphere of foreboding. Park’s script, adapted from Émile Zola’s novel “Thérèse Raquin,” has a lot of humor, but the laughter gets more uncomfortable as the film turns into a noir flick about a seemingly-innocent and abused wife using sex to goad a priest into murdering her husband.

As soon as Sang-hyun breaks his no-killing rule, the film snaps and Park, the same director that brought us Oldboy in all its disturbing glory, jumps from sequence to sequence taking apart his main character in brutal fashion.

The film has a little misogynistic slant to it, when we learn that Tae-ju uses her sex to manipulate and will go to excessive, emotionally devastating and self-mutilating lengths to get what she wants. When the love story sours and Tae-ju decides she thirsts for a new type of freedom – the freedom to kill – the message seems to be that when a girl discovers the power of her sex it is both empowering and terrifying. Kim Ok-vin plays her part as half-mad/half-succubus and 100% predator.

Thirst’s plot isn’t as coherent as some will hope. But the movie is a mosaic of imagery, violence and genuine questions about desire and ethics, love and bloodlust.

It just happens to be about vampires.

The reason that Thirst is such a shining example of a vampire movie in the times of vampire-saturation is because it’s not a monster story or a love story. The vampire, culturally, has always transformed itself to become what we fear. Very early on, a vampire was just a curse that would kill family members or infants in the Dark Ages. Bram Stoker made vampires about sex, Ann Rice made them about loneliness and tormented feelings about your identity, Stephanie Meyer made them sparkle.

But vampires are none of these things. They were meant to be romantic because evil is always tempting and seductive, not because a strong, eternally young stud is what every teenage girl dreams of. Vampires work best when they are used as they were intended to be: as a metaphor for the evil we fear; what’s lurking in the dark, what looks like such a gift even when you know its hell masquerading as heaven.

Thirst shows us a man becoming a monster by showing us what happens when you give into desires you know are wrong. That monster just happens to be a vampire priest.

If you can stand subtitles, seek this one out.

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