Thirst – Review
98 Minutes, Not Rated
Written and Directed by Eric Owen
**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
Insomnia spreads in a small town, causing fear and panic. As the situation becomes dire, two couples find salvation on an abandoned ranch until nefarious characters descend upon the land, claiming it as their own, and chaos ensues.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Insomnia is the basis for so many things. Sleep is an essential — ESSENTIAL — function of the human mind, and deprived of it long enough, weird things can happen.
So when the film starts and Jose can’t sleep and is behaving just a touch erratically, Thirst feels like it’s going to go one way, but then…
BOOM! Left turn, baby.
It’s not just Jose, but countless other people are starting to act in ways that seem to defy conventional logic. While the cause for that is rather swiftly sussed out, it’s the aftermath that brings the true drama.
I’m not going to regurgitate Thirst‘s plot for you beat by beat, but once folks figure out why this is happening, the lock-it-down and wait-it-out begins, which brings people into conflict to survive and establish a new hierarchy, however briefly it is understood to last, even by those building it.
People, in a word, suck. The worst of humanity will never surprise you with how “worst” they can be. Anytime society breaks down, for however brief a time, things get… real.
Even Rod Serling knew that back in the old Twilight Zone days (see “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street“).
BTW, my personal favorite “society-breaks-down” story is Day of the Triffids. Absolutely great.
I’m not sure why I enjoy watching these kind of stories play out; maybe it’s because I’m a closest authoritarian, secretly bent on world domination and patiently biding my time until my chance for POWER ARRIVES!!!
Or maybe it’s just because I think I’d be any different than anybody in any of these stories?
Regardless, Thirst is a very enjoyable (?) character study as we watch 2 (or three, depending on how invested you get in the third) couples, uncovering who they are, who they were, and who they might become in the face of these circumstances.
Well acted and shot, with the insomnia moments suitably unnerving (as a less-than-full-time insomniac myself, they hit home) and the following situational behaviors spot-on, this is an absolute echo of the recent global unpleasantness and the social media conspiracy movement.
Thirst is an absolute must-watch: Maybe twice.
Pay attention.
Thirst is available on Digital today and stars Brian Villalobos, Lori Kovacevich, Federica Estaba Rangel, Sara Jack, P Michael Hayes II, Brian Cogley, and Scotty Walker.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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