Stoker
★★★
Dir. Park Chan-Wook
(2013)
Park Chan-Wook's English language debut feature is filled with wonderfully tense moments, sublimely edited single sequences and sound design to make even the most strong stomached cinema goer go a big wobbly one but it's seriousness becomes a crutch in the film's final third when the Korean director tries to entertain with the obvious instead of shock with his unique mind. A sort of remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, the beautiful looking and gloomily titled Stoker is familiar territory for fans of the big house thriller. Its cast; Mia Wasikowska, Mathew Goode and Nicole Kidman do a splendid job, but something just doesn't sit right with this innocence lost, family shocker.
When India's father dies on her 18th birthday and his suave handsome younger brother, Charles, turns up to the funeral, her mother breaks the news that he will be sticking around for a while. The closed and serious young lady is instantly repulsed and drawn to the quiet man in equal measure. Almost as much as her odd mother. Soon enough dead bodies start making appearances and a game of taught jealousy plays out between mother and daughter with Charles becoming the object of their affections.
A well trodden path for the Oldboy director to use, the film is filled with a sense of us knowing every move before it's happened and as a thriller this perhaps is why Stoker can not succeed as a genre piece. That's not to say it doesn't deliver moments of greatness. The stretching of leather on a belt as it tightens and the whole sound design in general is a complete triumph from Chuck Michael as Clint Mansell's beautiful score lingers over the whole film; A piano duet between Goode and Wasikowska is amazingly constructed, a shower scene with the quiet young girl turns originally sinister and blatantly sexual at the same time and the creepy and restrained director uses many interesting motifs for death and sex as he unwinds Charles' real motives.
The whole design and construction of Stoker is flawless in fact. Though never quite touching Park's other work, it's certainly worth watching as a confident technical achievement in sound and vision. Unfortunately the story and the finale are so woven into American cinema that there are very little surprises from the film along the way. Park was always going to stroll into America after the success and praise he's received for all of his past work, it's just a shame that he didn't deliver something wonderfully oddball, something blisteringly original or something with a little more bite than what Stoker ends up delivering.
