Like unjustly excoriated The Hunger and ignored Ganja and Hess, Thirst will be judged wanting at least because of its style. The noticeable sea shift, for example, from dun color scheme of enclosure to modernistic fluorescent white is certainly jarring despite whatever thematic intentions. This 2009 Cannes Jury Prize-winner and first Korean feature to secure American studio backing and distribution also mixes in an excess of disparate elements, some of which should have been edited out for concentration and to reduce the not quite two-and-a-quarter hours.

Others may find blasphemous the combination of sacred and profane, although the juxtaposition and resolution suggest that whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. Certainly the low comedic excrescences detract from, and obscure, publicity pronouncements about director Park Chan-wook’s career-long dissection of “the core relationship between sin and redemption.”

No garlic, stakes in the heart or decapitations, silver bullets or bats or vermin are necessary, no howling wolves or canines or undead canine-fangs, either, though in line with the title, squishy, slurpy, splashy, sucking, gurgly sounds run amok as never before. Never dead, and riding a current tidal fad of resuscitation, the vampire has been pictured as monster-ego Byronic exploiter, as sexual succubus or, less often, as unhappy creature condemned to eternity.

Co-producing in addition to directing, Park had actually conceived the storyline ten years ago, got Song Kang-ho to agree to star, and then co-wrote the screenplay with Chung Seo-kyung, both collaborators with him on other films during the interim. Forget hokum about a germ in Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, whose Sixth (killing) and Seventh (adultery) Commandments theme is legion; rather, take at face value Park’s “scandalous vampire melodrama” characterization.

Song plays handsome Father Sang-hyun, administering last rites to a bloodied accident victim, ministering to the ill, and cognizant that mortal sin “suicide is to die a martyr to Satan.” The blind crippled priest (Park In-hwan) who is his spiritual mentor acts devil’s advocate to Sang’s motivation in enlisting as guinea pig for tests involving a fatal African disease, perhaps a metaphor for HIV. Blistered and thought dead, he revives but transformed by a transfusion of tainted blood.

The only survivor among five hundred such volunteers, his disfigured head bandaged like the Invisible Man’s, he is taken as a saint of cures by the lame and diseased. His own wounds smoothed by drinking human blood, he refuses to kill and so finds supplies in a hospital.

A mahjong-evening visit to the family that fed him noodles when he was a poor youngster puts a different fleshly temptation in his path. Dress-shop owner Mrs. Ra (Kim Hae-sook) had also mothered abandoned Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), who is now married to her impotent sadistic son Kang-woo (Shin Ha-kyun) and bossed about by both.

The devil is a woman, so to speak, for the wife who looks pale petulant adolescent seduces, or forces, or complies with, this priest pulled between heaven and hell. After some racy sex scenes, and some not always intentional comedy, she is not repelled by his nature but, instead, wants to be made like him to share powers of leaping rooftops and self-healing.

SPOILER ALERT

Willing and unwilling, the man of God disposes of the husband and, childhood family friend, moves in to help the inconsolable mother. Wet visions, or guilt images, of drowned Kang-woo literally come between the passionate lovers at every turn; and when, in anger, remorse and instinct, the self-proclaimed ex-priest makes the young woman into what she wants and he already is, the evil of her nature is either created or simply unleashed.

Hunting with pleasure, toying with prey, wielding tailor’s seam-snippers with a vengeance, she taunts Sang-hyun for his scruples, until the two are trapped in everlasting love and hate under the unblinking eyes of post-stroke Mrs. Ra.

There are implications about the splintered physical, psychological and spiritual nature of man. Less than the angels but above the demons, his fate is the Apostle’s to die is gain. Among its type, Thirst succeeds despite too many distractions, and in the final cliffhanger even toned-down humor between two opposed wills is a fulfilling benediction. 

(Released by Focus Features and rated "R" for graphic bloody violence, disturbing images, strong sexual content, nudity and language.)