Every time a film is released into the cinematic ether, it exists in an interplay between intention and interpretation. Does audience reaction align with what the filmmakers envisioned? It’s altogether murkier when it comes to films as keen to conjure the seventies grindhouse circuit as Thirst (‘Þorsti’ in the original Icelandic).
Originally released in 2019, this Icelandic language film is a splatterpunk fable of friendship between a 1,000-year-old vampire and a recovering drug addict reeling from the recent loss of her brother, a death for which she’s wrongfully suspected. The sequences of police procedure and a near constant chorus of sirens conjure a Nordic noir at odds with its clumsily edited B-movie shenanigans, ambiguous Satanic cult, and weird tech incongruences with cathode ray tube TVs alongside contactless payments. Where the film goes into overdrive is with anarchic mixed media sequences in the vein of Natural Born Killers and late nineties music videos.
Propelled by a choppy synthwave score, Thirst distracts from its own narrative with the use of too-loud squelchy sound effects and an over-reliance on fish-eye lens. Judiciously used, it can conjure a sense of our characters being watched by eldritch unseen forces, but its frequent deployment here is jarring. The main draw is, of course, the blood, which is delivered by the bucketload. Some two-hundred litres were claimed to have been used in the film which, at under ninety minutes, is an impressive feat.
But beneath the blood and cult lies something much more sinister. The vampire, Hjörtur (Hjörtur Sævar Steinason), is gay and makes no qualms about expressing his sexual desires. Except they manifest throughout the film as him murdering other men, some gay-identified, and often by biting their penises clean off in moments that strive for shock, schlock, and humour. This duality of gay desire manifesting as murder recalls real-life attacks and killings; both heterosexuals luring gay men to assault or murder, or gay serial killers like Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer who murdered and, in the case of Dahmer, ate their victims. The film begins with, what appears from the outset as, a gay pickup. Until Hjörtur kills the guy. Later, he kills another guy in a gay club. His queerness, then, depends on killing and consuming the queerness of others for no more reason than the splatter and spectacle. It reads mean-spirited and comes closer to gay exploitation cinema of yesteryear.
Here’s where the space between intention and interpretation occurs. It’s unclear what the filmmakers’ intent was, or whether writer Björn Leó Brynjarsson or directors Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson and Gaukur Úlfarsson are themselves queer (though Thirst is distributed by Peccadillo, who specialise in queer cinema). Combined with the film’s often unearned claims to ‘camp’, it all leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
DISTRIBUTOR
Peccadillo
DIRECTOR
Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson
Gaukur Úlfarsson
SCREENPLAY
Björn Leó Brynjarsson
CAST
Hjörtur Sævar Steinason
Hulda Lind Kristinsdóttir
Jens Jensson
DIGITAL
22 June 2026
