"Everyone makes mistakes. But if you sin, you have to make atonement for it...Big atonement for big sins. Small atonement for small sins."

—Geum-ja's (played by Yeong-ae Lee) words to her young daughter Jenny serve as an emotional lesson in morality from Chan-wook Park's 2005 Lady Vengeance.

Following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Oldboy (2003), Korean New Wave director Chan-wook Park's unintended Vengeance Trilogy ends with a breathtaking and devastating bang. Lady Vengeance (literally translated from Korean "Kind-hearted Miss Geum-ja") follows Geum-ja, a woman in her mid-30s newly released from 13 years in prison for kidnapping and murdering a boy. A preacher and a group of Christians dressed as Santa Claus await her release with the singing of hymns. When she coldly approaches, the preacher offers her a large block of white tofu. "It's tradition to eat tofu on release," he tells her, "so that you'll live white and never sin again." Geum-ja's voice-over interrupts, narrating her story over a flashback to her early prison days. She explains how the angel that resides in her is invoked through her prayers. She has become a person of faith—a convert. Back with the preacher and his tofu, Geum-ja stares blankly into his eyes. The choir watches in suspense as she slowly reaches up and casually flips the plate over onto the ground. Everyone stands frozen in surprise as they are introduced to Geum-ja—the angel of death.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is perhaps one of the best anti-hero films I have ever seen, based on concept alone. Chan-wook Park's Vengeance Trilogy is unlike most others because the plot, actors, and characters are all in no way linked or the same, but each film circulates around revenge. Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin) is a young deaf-mute who lives with his sister in a seedy apartment complex. His ambition was formerly focused on art school until his sister fell ill and needed a kidney transplant. He quit school and began working as a manual laborer in a factory in order to save up for her operation. Unable to give her one of his own kidneys because their blood types don't match, Ryu takes a chance and, using all the money that he has saved, tries to purchase a kidney from an illegal organ supply group which offers to give him the kidney he needs in exchange for one of his and 10 million won. But after waking up from the operation, he finds that the group has split with his clothes, money, and kidney.

A fantastical adaptation of Émile Zola's Thérèse Raquin. Not that I've ever read any Zola, mind you, but I've read about him. Maybe after I've finished working my way through the entire output of the 19th century Russian realists, I'll be ready. If only Zola had featured more vampires in his stories...Well, Chan-Wook Park knows how to get me interested in realism, at least -- same as the Russians -- with ideological discussions of atheism.

Sang-hyeon (Kang-ho Song) is a Catholic priest with a martyr complex or strong death drive (amounts to the same thing, I suppose), who plays guinea pig in a macabre experiment to help doctors find a cure for a virus that's particularly dangerous to Korean men. He's the only one to survive the voluntary infection due to a transfusion using vampire blood. The catch is that he now needs to feed on normal human blood to keep from sweating his own and breaking out in disfiguring boils. Initially, he's racked by guilt over his bodily urges, which leads to his sucking on a comatose patient's IV and a fellow priest, Noh (In-hwan Park), with a more sanguine attitude about the vampire virus. Sang-hyeon sees vampirism as a loss of humanity, Noh as a gift, a potential cure for his blindness. Due to his miracle cure, the vampire picks up a religious following of Catholics who see him as another messiah, parallel to that other popular tale of transfiguration. Is he a vampire who walks like a man, or man who acts like a vampire?