Perhaps if Nakashima had simply entered the first 30 minutes as a short it would have been a very different story because sadly after an intense and epic introduction this over stylised art house picture looses all its power and all the audiences’ interest.

The power house opening involves the confession of Yuko Moriguchi (Takako Matsu) a middle-school teacher whose life was destroyed when her four year old daughter was found dead. Convinced that her child’s accidental death was no accident at all she starts investigating herself only to discover that two of her pupils are to blame.

Devoured by revenge and anger she sets about destroying the lives of the kids who ruined hers waging a physical and psychological campaign on them, which we see evolving through the confessions of the students themselves and those closest to them, changing their lives forever to punish them for the crimes that the law let them get away with.

Tales of revenge have been appearing in movies for centuries from the Spaghetti Western to the 80’s action movies right up to the amazingly brutal and brilliant Korean revenge trilogy from Chan-wook Park and the upcoming I Saw the Devil.

Although promising so much from its bold, intriguing and abstractly constructed opening Confessions ultimately has nothing new to bring to the genre in its story, themes or characters as this Rubik’s Cube of revenge quickly unravels revealing stereotypical clichés and predictable twists.

After the first 30 minutes which is the time it takes for Moriguchi to tell her tragic tale and her shocking act of vengeance to her pupils, turning her class of unruly and uncaring kids into silent statues petrified by shock and fear the film falls apart spending the rest of its 106 minutes running time deteriorating into a pretentious pointless pulp.

Nakashima, who also directed Kamikaze Girls and Memories Of Matsuko and wrote the script based on a novel, is obviously endeavouring to subvert mainstream cinema in his stylisation and story telling however his efforts have a detrimental affect on the overall film and the enjoyment of the audience.

The mixture of monologue and flashbacks with incongruous elements such as slow motion and other effects starts out as interesting but there overuse eventually becomes tiresome and annoying.

These flashy techniques mixed with the intrusive music, which includes the kings of morbid navel gazing themselves Radiohead, makes the whole thing look at best like an overlong music video and at worst a first year students art project.

Within Confessions is a great 30 minute short film that has misguidedly been overextended to the point of pretension, diluting and polluting all its intensity and originality until the audience becomes bored and frustrated, unmoved and uncaring when the obvious climax finally comes.

My confession is I wish I had switched this movie off after the first 30 minutes.

Movie Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ 

Trailer:

The worst thing is that these days vampires are all the same, the same pale skin, the same trendy hair, the same sun hating Goth outfitted dull cliché’s packed full of teenage angst and pent up sexuality.

Well I was bored of vampires that is, until I watched Thirst.

Directed and co-written by Chan-wook Park the genius behind Old Boy and Lady Vengeance, Thirst is a modern day morality tale and a moving examination of the human condition which just happens to be a vampire movie.

Priest Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) selflessly volunteers for an experimental project to find a cure for a deadly virus. Surviving the treatment and the disease where all before him have died, many people in the outside world believe he has become a saint when in reality he has actually become a vampire.

Struggling with his thirst for blood his faith and principles are constantly challenged, as he tries to come to turns with his new life. Things become even more complicated when he meets the wife of a childhood friend, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin), who awakens a more carnal desire within him. As she looks to him to escape her stifling marriage, Sang-hyun falls deeper into her web leading him further away from his humanity and his chances of salvation.

As with all Park’s films Thirst is ultimately about modern society, the people that make it up and the dark desires that drive them lying just under the surface ready to rip apart their reality. What starts off seemingly as a love triangle drama with added vampirism moves slowly and steadily to all out horror amazingly never loosing its sense of realism along the way.

From subtle jokes such as the fact that Sang-hyun sleeps in a wardrobe on the floor which resembles a coffin to the age old ties with religion Thirst, or Bakjwi as it’s really called which translates as Bat in Korean, cleverly takes the ideas and associations of vampirism and shapes them into something new.

Most interestingly the enhanced sense of sexuality that vampires have been associated with since Bram Stoker’s original novel is brilliantly explored in the sensual affair between the two main characters. Mixing love and death, pleasure and pain this sexual relationship drives the pair and the film’s main narrative towards violence and destruction but also ultimately to the characters touching climax.

The performances are pitch perfect, especially Song Kang-ho who utilises the same innocence he perfected in his role in the marvellous monster movie Gwoemul (The Host), crafting a character who is instantly likable but fatally flawed and whose redemption you crave almost as much as he does.

Stylish and imaginative, funny and tragic all in equal measures, this Korean box office hit and winner of the Prix du Jury at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival deserves a much wider audience to witness its brilliance.

If only more modern vampire movies were this good.

Movie Rating: ★★★★★ 

You can buy it with Free Delivery from:

Trailer: