A rather wan attempt to pump new blood into the vampire genre by injecting (no
pun intended) a druggie angle, The Thirst purports to be a harrowing
examination of two recovering drug addicts facing an entirely new sort of
“addiction.” It’s a tonal mishmash of gory set pieces, though, and a
movie that can’t really overcome the weight of its limited means, lacking as it
does a convincingly stylistic imagination and flair.
Directed
in slapdash fashion by Jeremy Kasten (All Souls Day: Dia de los Muertos,
The Wizard of Gore), the movie centers on recuperating junkies Max (Matt
Keeslar) and Lisa (Clare Kramer), who are having a tough time adjusting to
their new lives now that they’ve kicked their old habits. When a series of
tragic and sudden events threaten their lives, both are recruited into a clan
of sex- and gore-crazed vampires, led by the charismatic Darius (Jeremy Sisto).
Each depraved fix hooks the couple deeper on their new narcotic, human blood,
but Max and Lisa eventually begin to rebel against their horrific plight,
hoping that kicking this habit will keep them out of hell.
As
I’ve mentioned previously but will reiterate here, I remember flipping through
screenwriter-producer Mark Altman’s 1991 behind-the-scenes book on Twin
Peaks, and being wowed… by the number of typos and errors. Even for what
was obviously a quickie cash-in title, I thought at the time, this was slung
together in pretty haphazard fashion. The same might be said for quite a lot of
Altman’s hackishly referential writing for the big screen, which includes Room
6, starring Christine
Taylor; 1998’s Star Trek-inspired Free Enterprise; Uwe
Boll’s House of the Dead (and its sequel); and the recent Dead and
Deader. Altman is one of five credited writers here, and he and
his cohorts don’t do much beyond come up with nipped bits from other movies and
staple them together in an effort to bridge together set pieces. Director
Kasten, meanwhile, obliges his writers in canted-angle fashion.
A
few of the arterial sprays and dismemberments are enjoyable for diehard genre
fans, but the best that can really be said of The Thirst is that
provides work to a recognizable cast that is mostly above its value —
actors like Sisto (Six Feet Under), Keeslar (Art School Confidential)
and Kramer (Bring It On, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Adam Baldwin,
Erik Palladino and such horror film veterans as Ellie Cornell (Halloween 4
& 5) round out the cast.
1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, The Thirst comes
packaged in a regular Amray case that is in turn housed in a cardboard
slipcover with slightly raised lettering. Its supplemental features consist of an
audio commentary track with writer-producer Altman and composer Joe Kraemer,
and around 17 minutes of deleted scenes. There are also a DVD-ROM version
of the screenplay, trailers for other Anchor Bay/Starz genre releases, and a
gallery of still images from the movie. D+ (Movie) B (Disc)