Thirst Is the 'Anti-Twilight'

The Twilight series found its remarkable success in subverting the traditional vampire story, turning the monsters of legend into symbols of teenage narcissism and self-pity—another “youth tribe” like jocks and geeks, writes Brendan O’Neill at Spiked. If that treatment leaves you well, cold, check out the "brilliant new film" Thirst by South Korea's Chan-wook Park, in which vampires are used to examine issues of moral ambiguity and alienation from “the human.”

Thirst and Twilight seem similar on the surface. Both feature vampires who abstain from hunting humans and others who relish it, but make no mistake, O’Neill writes: "Thirst is the anti-Twilight. The human girl is no Avril Lavigne-style sourpuss but an evil bitch destined for hell, and the vampire boy (actually man) does not spend the whole time in forests talking about his feelings” but is instead locked in an intense moral struggle to regain his humanity.
(More vampires stories.)