Stoker (2013)
Certified: 18
Duration: 99 minutes
Directed by: Park Chan-wook
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman, Dermot Mulroney, Jacki Weaver, Lucas Till, Alden Ehrenreich, Phyllis Somerville, Ralph Brown, Judith Godrèche
KRS release
Park Chan-wook is the director of one of the most impressive films I have ever seen: 2003’s Oldboy. This was the second film in what is known as The Vengeance Trilogy. Although flawed, his other films are memorable, strong and incredibly stylised in their vision.
It’s very rare nowadays to find a film that has the power to impress and disturb at the same time
Stoker is the Korean director’s English debut and, surprisingly enough, he has delivered a Hitchcockian-style movie. Park here works from a screenplay by Wentworth Miller, the lead star of hit TV series Prison Break, who wrote under the pseudonym Ted Foulke.
Long time in gestation, the script had been one of 2010’s black list of unproduced screenplays which should have seen the light of day before.
The film infuses Hitchcockian elements with Bram Stoker’s style of horror and achieves a great sense of unpredictability. It leaps out at its audience with its unnerving sense of composure and orchestration as it sweeps and paints a picture of a dark descent into psychosis that is unnerving. It’s very rare nowadays to find a film that has the power to impress and disturb at the same time and this makes Stoker even more of a rough gem.
India (Mia Wasikowska) is a star student who has just lost her father in a car accident which further heightens her morbid tendencies. That is when her uncle Charles (Matthew Goode) turns up and slowly grows close to India’s mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). The latter is not all there and Charles takes control of her life, arousing India’s suspicions. People soon start to disappear as he also tries to befriend the girl.
Meanwhile, India starts making links between the different deaths and incidents as the warped descent into family bizarreness increases by the minute. Soon mother and daughter will start to hold their ground and face each other off.
The combination and glacial synchronicity between Kidman and Wasikowska is impressive. Wasikowska is cold whereas Kidman is brittle, both giving the film an added dimension with each of their moves and batting of the eyes becoming almost like a secret agenda. Kidman is superb and it has been a long time since she was this good on screen.
Goode, meanwhile, is syrupy sweet as the truth about him shows that deception is all part of the game. The mystery aspect of the movie soon unravels but it is the descent into madness that is most remarkable and will leave a lasting effect.
The director knowingly manipulates his cast, especially the women, making the audience submit to a sort of craving that is manifested by the leading ladies. The direction’s perfect timing is one of the film’s strengths.
The escalation and minute dissection of violence adds an intricate and detailed element to the movie that will make Stoker quite a cold furnace.