Those flesh-eaters aren’t, however, the only species of the living dead resurfacing in multiplexes and arthouses this month. Equally evergreen in popularity stakes, and a more refined and romantic folklore creation, the vampire has again risen from its grave.

In the horror comedy Cirque du Freak, a regular American teenager named Darren meets a mysterious and appropriately oddly monikered man named Larten Crepsley (played by the creepily comic giant clown John C Reilly) at a freak show. After discovering the hard way that Crepsley is a bloodsucker, the bewildered boy is forced to leave home and go on the road with his oddball travelling troupe.

Based on the Vampire’s Assistant series of books by Darren Shan and directed by Paul Weitz (who had a misfire with the first and, for now, only instalment of Phillip Pullman’s fantasy His Dark Materials, which Paul produced for his brother Chris), Cirque du Freak is clearly hoped to be a profitable new franchise for the old house of movie-land monsters Universal Studios.

A month later, the commercially, if not critically, successful franchise Universal is no doubt attempting to sink its teeth into -- the adaptations of Stephanie Meyer’s children of the night teen romance bestsellers -- returns with The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Second time round (and now under the direction of Chris, yep, Weitz) Kirsten Stewart and Robert Pattinson -- otherwise known as Bella and Edward -- must once more juggle the trials and tribulations of their wonder years with being, respectively, mortal and undead.

If that sounds like a somewhat sniffy appraisal of those two new and new-ish vampire-oriented Hollywood franchises, then let’s just say teenagers and young twentysomethings are not the only audience out there thirsting for bloodsuckers. Youth-focused vampire movies are more often than not commercial in nature, and that kind of film does not necessarily make for the best and most interesting examples of the be-fanged horror genre.

For an example of a distinctly adult and arthouse big screen treatment of vampires, you need look no further than Thirst. Co-written and directed by South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, Thirst was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May and ended up splitting the Jury Prize with the universally praised British social realist drama Fish Tank. That’s pretty good going for a horror movie, a genre that doesn’t traditionally fare well at highbrow cinema events such as Cannes.

But then anyone familiar with Park’s films will be unsurprised to learn than his take on vampires is a very unconventional one. Just as his striking revenge trilogy (Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Old Boy and Lady Vengeance), which between them racked up a shelf-load of film festival awards,

radically reworked the crime movie sub-genre, so too does Park’s take on vampires overhaul this particular vein of horror cinema. “There are no bats,” Park says of Thirst, “no stake through the heart, no fear of garlic and the cross.”

Nevertheless, Thirst is splattered with plenty of blood and sex, and it also boasts a strong religious theme, elements which have featured heavily in the vampire tale from Bram Stoker’s seminal 1897 novel onwards.

Loosely based on another nineteenth-century literary classic, Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, the film opens with a priest (played by the South Korean Tom Cruise, Song Kang-ho, best known here for the parodic creature feature The Host) volunteering himself for a vaccine development project aimed at eradicating a deadly virus. When the virus takes hold of him, the priest is given an emergency blood transfusion that saves his life (well, sort of) by turning him into a vampire, one that craves not only more plasma but also carnal pleasure. Thereafter, the now intensely morally conflicted priest insinuates himself into the family of a childhood friend whose unhappy wife he promptly seduces (although the lust is certainly mutual) and introduces her to a whole new world of sensual pleasures. “I liked the idea,” Park says, “of a vampire as a metaphor for any kind of exploiter.”

Thus, Thirst unspools as a gleefully mischievous morality play, complete with deadpan humour, which ridicules hypocrisy in the church and repression in the home. Park previously tackled vampires in the short Cut, his segment for the 2004 portmanteau film Three Extremes, but he maintains: “I cannot and do not watch horror films; I scare easily.” Anyone who recalls the dentistry-with-hammer scene from Old Boy might argue that point, but watching Thirst it becomes clear that Park has subverted the genre conventions to such a degree it’s only a horror film on paper.

“Thirst,” as Park says, “is a scandalous vampire melodrama.”

That’s more than can be said of the anaemic Twilight films with their blood and sex-lite approach to vampires and their deeply conservative attitude to relations between girls and boys that’s held over from the books penned by self-confessed “strait-laced” Mormon Meyer.

And that anaemic treatment of bloodsuckers has so often undermined vampire films aimed at the young, mainstream cinema-goer demographic. Think of that supposed teen vamp classic The Lost Boys -- that was just Keifer Sutherland and the rest prancing about in long coats and bleached barnets. Interview With the Vampire -- ditto Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt in ruffled shirts with open collars. Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- the original movie was as daft as the title sounds. Lesbian Vampire Killers -- I rest my case. Where’s the true red-blooded transgression that the vampire myth offers storytellers, an aesthetic that ought to suit rebellious teens right down to the ground?

Even those vampire films made for older mainstream crowds -- and let’s be honest here, they’re all American -- generally fail to drive the stake though the heart.

Kathryn Bigalow’s bloodsucker chiller Near Dark got close, as did Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn. But look at the Blade and Underworld series -- they’re underwhelmingly conventional action flicks that simply cross-pollinate vampires with, respectively, martial arts and werewolves. Meanwhile, other studio films such as 30 Days of Night and I Am Legend totally fudge great source material.

No, if you want your vampire films to be truly, madly and deeply transgressive, you’ve got to look to arthouse cinema. Previous to Thirst, it took the recent Swedish genre entry, Let the Right One In, to show us something truly transgressive. Here was a film about two kids, one human one undead, falling for each other, that was at once shocking and heartfelt in a way the Twilights will never be.

And if you look back at vampire films over the last few decades, you’ll find the ones that delivered something new and thrilling with their takes on plasma-loving parasites never made the multiplexes: Tony Scott’s The Hunger (who’d have thought?), Guillermo del Toro’s debut Cronos, Michael Almereyda’s Nadja, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, the Nosferatu-referencing Shadow of the Vampire, Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day.

As the shadow of Halloween falls, choose your breed of vampire film carefully.

 

Thirst is out October 16.

Park Chan-wook