Vampire movies are all the bloody rage. Having seen a slumber for the past few years (possibly due to the awful Queen of the Damned, or Buffy and Angel overdosing us), the genre of sunlight-intolerant bloodsuckers is seeing a resurgence in the last year or so. The key player is Twilight, which transposes notions of abstainance upon a figure that traditionally represented a fear of sexuality, and its sequels are already confirmed. A remake of the Manga film Blood: The Last Vampire is in production. HBO series True Blood got great reviews and a commendable portion of the audience. Outside of the US the Norwegian film Let the Right One In received much acclaim and is already set to see a Hollywood remake. And now Korea is in on the resurgence.

Park Chan Wook is best known for the inventive and excellent thriller Old Boy, not to mention the other two parts of his Vengeance Trilogy. After making the minor I’m A Cyborg… the director is back on track with Thirst. It’s the atmospheric tale of a priest who gets turned into some sort of vampire creature as part of a botched experiment. The best vampire films are the ones who use it as a metaphor for some social or personal malaise. And this film seems to use the vampire figure to represent repressed religious feelings or a sense of doubt. The trailer is in Korean, but the visuals are strong enough to make Thirst seem like an intriguing tale. Thirst will appear in this month’s Cannes Film Festival, and should see a worldwide release later in the year.