The Thirst

As an artist, I have a great deal of respect for the process of movie making. I realize that for some people involved, this hypothetical movie that I may be watching, even though it may not be to my tastes, may represent their life's work for some involved in the process. I can see how it is the work product of creative people, and I appreciate their efforts, even if not the end product. For this reason I almost never rate a movie lower than a "5".

Then we come to "The Thirst"...... This is a movie that, at the end, makes me want to stand and scream "I WANT MY 2 HOURS BACK!" For the first time (not that it should have been my first perhaps) I sat there as the credits rolled and thought to myself, "that person should be fired by the studio, and that person, and ....." It was brutal. The plot was weak, the camera work was really bad, and the acting was lousy too (in large part to the weak plot). Unless you are conduction a film study or in a class that requires you to see how bad a movie really can be, I would recommend you steer clear of this disaster.

I'm something of a connoisseur of vampire movies. Even the bad ones are usually fun to watch. But this one... it just fell flat. Firstly, it's got nothing in it that we haven't already seen in a hundred other vampire movies. Second of all, I found it difficult to identify with or care about either of the main characters at all. They're not particularly interesting, despite several formulaic attempts to give them "depth." The only characters who are even remotely interesting or fun are the so-called "bad guys"--the vampires. Adam Baldwin, playing pretty much the same character he played in Firefly and Serenity; Neil Jackson, with whom I was previously unfamiliar, but marginally impressed; and Jeremy Sisto, who is clearly having a blast in this film, switching back and forth seemingly at random between a Russian accent and a Southern one (which was possibly the best part of the movie). Far from the first movie to have its villains be more engaging than its heroes, of course. But the problem is that the lives and histories of these characters--teeming with potential--are only just barely mentioned or hinted at. This movie could have scored at least another point or two with me if they had told it from the vampires' point of view, rather than the couple.

Fans of Buffy and Angel might want to give this movie a look, as it has no less than three former cast members: Clare Kramer, Adam Baldwin, and Tom Lenk (the other bright spot of the movie--he's hilarious). But anyone who doesn't recognize the names I just mentioned would do best to stay away.

It's a total "Near Dark" rip-off and some of the elements suffer in comparison to the original and tonally it's kind of scatter-shot, uncontrolled, but very fun and interesting in its own way. One interesting thing is how it takes the drug-addiction metaphor angle-- familiar from "Near Dark" and Abel Ferarra's "The Addiction"-- and runs with it in a really enjoyable, over-the-top way.

It's also very well directed though you can see here and there where the speed and pressure of low budget production led to a few key scenes not being as executed as well as possible. But that's really kind of a quibble.

I recommend it.

This film had a fair amount of nudity in it (I have nothing against that :) ) and some very bizarre/bloody scenes. If you are rating this movie for plot, acting, special effects, etc, and overall entertainment value amongst mainstream movies, this film is a failure. If you are looking for weirdness, blood, and nudity (almost all female), then perhaps this movie is for you... but even from that perspective it isn't that great.

Plot: C-, Nothing new. There are not really any amazing twists to the story. It's vampires. Most people have seen a vampire movie or two, and this one is not overly unique in terms of plot.

Acting: D+, It's pretty terrible. I think the best acting performance is done by the main female character, and she was nothing that great. The main dude was a bad actor. He got better towards the end of the movie, but a 100% improvement wouldn't even be saying much. Most everyone else was bad. Some of the actors were even annoying. I am not sure if this was the role they were given or their acting skill.

Special effects: C-, The most prominent effect in this movie was obviously the blood. It seems like every 10 minutes it's a bloodbath. To say it looked fake gives a summary of the quality, but specifically, it looked like anytime someone was injured a pipe of red water just exploded and sprayed all over the place. Ridiculous. The other effects in the movie were pretty crappy too.

Character development: D+, There was clearly an attempt at this, as some characters do undergo radical change in this movie, and so one could argue that this movie aspect is better than what I'm indicating. I think the poor acting really killed it for me. A good movie conveys characters in such a way that you understand what they are all about, and you either identify with them or you have some strong opinion about them. In this movie, it's hard to really care.

*BEST aspect of this movie: The nudity, cause not much else was worthwhile.

*WORST aspect of this movie: You don't care about the characters. Their strangeness combined with the bad acting and some other factors prevent you from really identifying with or at least having a strong opinion of the characters.

*OVERALL: I really like vampire movies, and that's why I rented this one, but it was bad. It was annoying in many parts. The characters sucked. The effects were bad. Besides a few redeeming scenes and the aspect I marked as the best movie aspect, it had little to offer.

Plot is about a terminal ill woman's last ditched attempt to keep alive, thanks to a late night visit from a vampiric nurse, only set back being she didn't tell her boyfriend her plans, so when he finds her months later dancing in a seedy nightclub after being supposedly dead, he gets roped into joining her new found vampire family. Then they decide to try kick the vampire urge by going cold turkey.

The "Requiem For A Dream Meets Near Dark" tagline for this was always going to be hard for it to live upto. And sadly though pretty obviously this doesn't come close to either.

But that said its a very entertaining horror film once it picks up, has bucket loads of blood, heaps of throw away laughs and enough twisted off the wall madness to keep even the most hard to please horror fan happy.

Great to see Fireflys Jayne aka Adam Baldwin turn up in a horror movie but even he's outdone by the thin white duke English vampire played by Neil Jackson (Duke is also in The Thirst (2006) by Tom Shell).

Director Jeremy Kasten is slowly but surely rising to the top tier of new American horror genre directors, hopefully this is a sign of things to come specially as his next feature is a remake of HG Lewis's Wizard Of Gore. One I'm sure horrorheads don't want to see messed up.

The Thirst gets a very respectful 7/10 from me, leaving me thirsty for more of the same.