SOUTH KOREA’S MASTER OF MAYHEM, CHAN-WOOK PARK DELIVERS HIS TAKE ON THE VAMPIRE FLICK IN THIS EYE-BOGGLING CAVALCADE OF SEX, INFIDELITY, BLOOD-LUST, MURDER AND THE CATHOLIC PRIEST MIXED UP IN ALL OF THEM.

It’s a tough ask to top Old Boy and Lady Vengeance, but he certainly applies himself by taking traditional celluloid blood-sucking lore, adding a dash of Zola’s Therese Raquin, and no doubt drawing on the commanding presence of various Christian churches in today’s South Korean society. The doughty Kang-ho Song (from monster flick The Host and kimchee western The Good, the Bad, the Weird) plays a man of the cloth driven to do good, who signs up for a medical research programme that’s already killed 499 volunteers. Surprisingly, he survives intact — except that his skin now burns in sunshine, and he has a raging thirst for human blood. Spending time in a hospital provides opportunities for some fairly benign quaffing, but it also brings him into contact with a stricken patient’s seemingly demure, long-suffering wife (Hae-sook Kim). Sparks fly, and soon his hunger is of a very different variety.

Park’s obviously using the vampire idea to suggest that, whether it’s religion or desire, we can sometimes face addictions which overwhelm us. That said, as his movie veers from brilliantly choreographed carnage to sardonic social comedy and a final affecting restatement of the primacy of moral choice, he never gives us that long to think about it. Especially when ferociously wicked Kim is tearing it up as a femme fatale in thrall to sensation, proving that it certainly is the quiet ones you have to watch. — Trevor Johnston.