Stoker

This is the first English language film from South Korean director Chan-Wook Park. He is probably most famous for the intense psychological thriller Oldboy. With his American debut he reigns in the extremity somewhat but does retain the visual inventiveness that is also one of his trademarks. In many ways Stoker is a modern update of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Like that one, this film has a mysterious uncle re-emerge into the life of a family after many years of absence. Before long it becomes pretty clear that all is not as it seems with this man and he is in fact extremely dangerous. The main character is an 18 year old girl called India Stoker played by Mia Wasikowska who was recently in the not very good but very popular Alice in Wonderland. She leads the film very well and carries off the bookish character effectively. There is also able support from Nicole Kidman as her mother.

The look and feel of Stoker is impressive. The atmosphere is well sustained throughout. If I had a criticism it would simply be that the story ultimately isn't all that original and there aren't really a lot of surprises. What it does do though is to take a fairly standard psychological thriller story and make it interesting by way of cinematic techniques. It isn't a movie that is exactly going to break the mould but it is pretty accomplished nevertheless and is a pretty good first English language feature from its director.

I read many of the reviews on this site before deciding to watch this movie. And since I really like slow moving psychological thrillers I gave this move an honest chance. That should not be given.

The movie is well shot, well acted, yet utterly uninteresting. The story does not build up in any straight direction, you never know what is real and what is not and there is just so much confusion in the storytelling that I never really knew where I was standing. I began to wonder if there would be some grand twist in the end, and was waiting for it through one pointless scene after the other, just to realize the ending could be seen a mile away and all that confusing storytelling really amounts to absolutely nothing.

I would recommend this movie only to people who can sit through two hours of something they are not exactly sure whether it is what you are watching. Just terrible in my opinion. The entirety of the story could be summed up in 30 minutes and it would make for a wonderful short movie. But as it is - it is tedious and unrewarding.

I had missed this movie when it came out a few years ago. I recently did a search on "best movies" of various years and came upon it for the year 2013.

Instead of trying to give a summary I will just say that what seems to be the situation at the beginning of the movie isn't valid, and as the movie goes along, all the way to the final scene, additional surprises come at you.

It involves the untimely death of a husband and dad, Mr Stoker, followed immediately by the showing up of dad's rarely seen brother Charlie. His appearance happens to be on the daughter's 18th birthday and that was not a coincidence.

All the parts are very well portrayed by the various actors, the story and its nuances are disturbing but the movie is so well done that it is totally worthwhile.

A thriller about psychopaths and sick agendas, Stoker's title summons connotations of the Dracula author. With its Gothic romance novel visual design, a moody anti-heroine right out of the Twilight craze, and a shower masturbation montage borrowing visual cues from Psycho, Stoker presumes to deliver a power-punch of stormy atmosphere and unsettling, offbeat storytelling. Provocative and lurid, artfully photographed, that atmosphere is indeed present in Stoker, as is its departure from the beaten path of mainstream studio fare.

The picture pulls its knock-out upper-cut however, by betraying a derivative (though not over-worn) story and a not-so-novel revelation of its mystery. The plot is essentially Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt (1943), but this is a good one, full of potential for delightful and interesting variations, such as the wickedly disturbing 1966 Let's Kill Uncle with Mary Badham of To Kill A Mockingbird fame.

In Stoker, troubled India (Mia Wasikowska) reminds us of Wednesday from The Addam's Family. Wealthy, privileged, doted on, but misfit, morbid, and sporting a damningly annoying overbearing of sophisticated, anti-social charm, India is grudgingly and minimally cooperative. She's resentful, and seething with some inner grievances, but we're never made privy to what they are. There's a good and evil struggle within her, offset by a chronic, clear desire to be elsewhere. But rather than take action to affect change, she grumpily goes through the motions, while internally swimming against the current.

In East Of Eden, Cal Trask (James Dean) beguiles us by revealing an inner turmoil and a jagged chasm of obviously anguished, and likely twisted emotions. The feelings never have to be explained. It's sufficient that Cal's facial expressions betray them. Our imaginations run wild to fill in the rest. Similarly in Stoker, with her obviously charred soul, India is virtually a plot element unto herself, and the most intriguing one in the film. As with the old inmates' adage, family expectations and social constraints may imprison her, but in her mind she's free, and "they" can't take that away from her.

Or can they? India is stewing in repressed passions but we don't know what they are. Nor will we, for while we eventually receive simple explanation for the root cause of her condition, Stoker never explores the deep, murky waters of that bottomless pool personality behind India's ink-well black eyes.

There's a lot of masquerade in Stoker. While there's obviously more to India than we can fathom, and we want to know all about her, there's also more to her uncanny, disingenuous paternal Uncle Charles (Matthew Goode), and upon meeting him, neither we, nor India, are so sure we want to take a sounding. Charles makes the scene following the funeral for India's father whose very untimely death occurred in an equally unlikely accident.

Despite being extroverted and ingratiating, there's something just not right about Uncle Charley. He exudes a facade of Mormon-esque, overly enthused, positive cheer which nearly overshadows a subtle undercurrent of ruthless self-service. But maybe that's just India's cynical outlook rubbing off on us. Either way, Uncle Charley's here to stay, and after inviting himself as permanent house guest, he begins brazenly courting India's bereaved, yet bored and impulsive, emotionally vulnerable mother (Nicole Kidman). Vanquishing from the household all who might oppose him, such as the loyal housekeeper (Peg Allen) and India's suspicious great aunt (Jacki Weaver), we can only assume he's after the family fortune, but disturbingly, he seems to have deeper designs. These include India's very corpus corporis and mens mentis, as she openly defies Uncle Charley's attempts at domination until he discovers a way to manipulate India's, um, unusual susceptibilities.

At first resentful of Charles's intrusion. and put in an adversarial relationship with her mother who seems to be completely malleable to his will, India becomes jealous, but soon begins to bond with Charles. India's a gloomy, stifled little sexpot and she secretly craves the attention. The trio form a dangerous triangle, which sweeps them in a churning cat-and-mouse-play set of rapids toward the tumultuous falls of total bedlam. This is where Stoker shows its potential to become something original, to reveal fascinating, horrible things, to surprise us, and make us wonder, to keep us guessing on the edges of our seats.

It doesn't.

What could be a captivating web of competing, ulterior motives and petulant scheming never materializes. What could be an engrossing character portrait of India slams flat. We never get that coveted insight into India's motivations, how she sees the world or why she sees it that way. India is simply toxic and contrary with little explanation until the end, at which point she defies her own cunning nature and selects, in lieu of more interesting, profitable, and clever options, an irrational, self-destructive course of action.

Even so, Stoker is still pretty good. It's a satisfying change of pace from the patronizingly conventional and downright silly horror releases lately issuing from Tinseltown like effluent from a landfill, and most Gothic thriller fans will want to see it.

South Korean director Chan-wook Park is best known to fans of the weird for his bizarre, gory cult movies such as Oldboy from The Vengeance Trilogy. With Stoker, he makes his mainstream, US debut. To do so requires that he "sell-out" a little to the conventions of Hollywood marketing, and I suspect this is why he didn't tamper with co-producer, Wentworth Miller's script, even though its deficiencies beg to be tweaked. Stoker more or less works for non-discriminating audiences who can be dazzled by a bit of flash without being driven to look deeper. Park's penchant for the absurd and the gory is still subtly evident. Importantly, Stoker demonstrates Park's trustworthiness to competently direct conventional cinema. With Nicole Kidman on board, and an appeal to the current Twilight-style popular trend, Stoker will, we hope, allow the director to establish himself on the big-budget launching pad from which we anticipate more intriguing work to soar off in the future.

'Stoker (2013)' tells the familiar tale of an enigmatic, long-lost family member emerging after the death of a patriarchal figure, doing little to differentiate itself from the plethora of other movies in its subgenre. When it boils right down to it, it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to be. As such, it all feels rather... inconsequential. It plays its hand far too early in some aspects and, in general, is just incredibly predictable. Even its more extreme elements are presented in a somewhat 'neutered' fashion, feeling like they were included to shock rather than to elevate the story (or, even, make it more unique). That's not to say the film is bad, though. It's a relatively engaging and entertaining in-the-moment experience that does have some interesting aspects. The most obvious of these is its avant-garde direction from Park Chan-Wook, which is turned up to eleven in almost every single scene. This creates an odd effect that does elevate the flick's mysterious atmosphere, even if it sometimes seems a little too 'arty' for its own good. Another thing the film has going for it is its strong cast, each of whom turn in fairly strong performances. The overall thing just falls down in retrospection, though, because it doesn't really do anything all that special. Its overly complex direction hides the fact that it isn't all that deep, something which becomes clearer and clearer the longer you spend thinking about it. It's one of Park's weakest films, for sure. Still, it's a decent mystery-thriller. It's entertaining enough while it lasts. 6/10.