My first impressions after watching Thirst were that it was trying to be too much. I didn't relate at all to the guilt the protagonist felt about a certain incident and the ensuing hilarious/freaky hallucination scenes. I thought it was brilliant but at that point, the guilt felt forced– I couldn't relate to the guilt/revenge/forgiveness thing and it just felt like a tack-on from his previous ouevre.

The parallels of religious imagery and family oppression (the mother's gaze being a prominent and powerful image) were both heavy, heavy heavy. I read into it some Jungian stuff with the man and woman making a quaternio with their vampire selves as Anima/Animus. It certainly has a wealth of psychological symbolism but all of this intensity was exhausting and making me wish it would end. And the gratuitous extreme violence. Ugh.

That being said, my reactions to the Revenge trilogy were all initially negative/shocked and over time I have found them to be invaluable in exploring the human soul, the meaning of forgiveness, and above all being powerful anti-revenge statements. As for Thirst, time will tell. It may be that my initial reaction of disgust and wishing it were over has more to do with the difficult subject matter and subconscious issues dealt with (religion, identity, suicide, family), or it may be that it was simply trying to shove too much into one movie.

Great review!

Ugh.