Stoker Review | Chan-Wook Park's First American Feature Dazzles and Disturbs

Orlando Lens

By Nicholas Ware

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I am an unabashed fan of Chan-Wook Park's Oldboy. It is his best and most celebrated film, but it is not the only great work that the South Korean writer-director has produced in his homeland in the last decade and a half. The other two films in his "Vengeance Trilogy," Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance, are triumphs as well, and even his lesser-loved work--like his film previous to Stoker, Thirst--has considerable moments of brilliance. Park's skills are in his visual storytelling and his willingness to go deep into the recess of the deviant mind, whether that mind is born deviant, made deviant by trauma, or even made deviant through noble pursuits like justice or love. Stoker is another of Park's studies on deviance, and its undeniable visual beauty and auditory sumptuousness make it seductive while its narrative content makes it highly unsettling. It's a cocktail that goes down neither sour nor sweet, instead delivering an umami that few films have the ambition to produce. 

All three main characters (visible on the poster) are Stokers, a family affected by the loss of patriarch Richard. India, played by Mia Wasikowska (the title character in Tim Burton's soulless Alice in Wonderland), loses her father on her 18th birthday, and not long after Charlie (Matthew Goode from Watchmen), an uncle she never knew she has, arrives and moves into her ancient, stately home. India's mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman, she of the unmoving upper lip) takes an all-too-intense liking to the charming and highly erudite Charlie, but Charlie seems to have other, perhaps more sinister interests. Its structure is directly referential to Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. However, the answer to the question of the mysterious uncle is not Stoker's morsel. Rather, the morsel of the film is wholly flavored by Park's ravishing technique.

In truth, the plot is the weakest part of Stoker. This may be due to Park's lack of involvement with the script (at least in terms of screen credit) or the film being in his second language. What Stoker does right is capture an aura of sociopathic allure, daring the audience to enjoy, perhaps even become excited by, the threats of taboo-breaking that swell like waves ready to crash, wet, on the film's shores. One particularly powerful scene lulls the audience into a false sense of compassion for the trauma that a character has just experienced it before turning our perception of the character's feelings on its end. The scene feels like a trick only because we need it to be; our expectation of conformity to psychological norms is the true trick.

This move, like all of Stoker, is done through beautifully composed, artfully framed, and crisply shadowed shots of the Stokers and their manor. Light and shadow abound, because light and shadow--within a family, within a person--are what are truly in conflict in Stoker, not the machinations of the characters. I can say without spoiling the end that the story's hero wins and the villain loses. I could also call myself a liar. That is the perverse ambiguity--wrapped neatly in yellow ribbon like India's birthday shoes--that Stoker washes over a rapt audience. Not only are Park's shots like ripe fruit, juicy and moist, but his soundtrack plays with the perfect light touch. Clint Mansell's score is largely gentle, but throbs when necessary, keeping the audience on the edge of anticipation. Phillip Glass contributes two piano pieces for the characters to play, one of which is shot with a sweaty fervor that lifts each note to its own crescendo. If English if not Park's strong-suit, he more than makes up for his clumsiness with the spoken word by elevating the the voice of the film itself.

The acting is partially wax-stiff but melts quickly in passionate bouts. This fits the themes of grief, discomfort, and alienation that superficially mask abberation and desire. Kidman gets the showiest moment--partially featured in the trailer--but it is Wasikowska who is most fearless. She attacks her role like a hunter stalking prey, and by the end she has the character by the throat, seeping. Goode seems a unnatural charmer, a secretly awkward heartthrob, and does fantastic work as well. Colin Firth was originally cast as Charlie before conflicts forced him to drop out but I cannot imagine the doughier, more affable Firth pulling off the cold charisma required of the role that Goode has in spades.

There is, without question, a particular strain of film-goer that will hate Stoker. This person will hate the way the film makes them feel, the way it eschews traditional hero/villain binaries, the way it teases everything and denies no possibility. This person will hate what the film is trying to do... yet mostly, this person will hate themselves because they know at some point in viewing Stoker the film forced a yearn for the perverse. Stoker is not coy with its title; that's a direct reference to Bram, creator of the literary vampire, and Stoker is a vampire of a film. It seduces you, destroys you, and turns you into itself. If Stoker is the pact the darkness offers me, I just might acquiesce.

Stoker opens Friday, March 22nd at Regal Winter Park Village 20. Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content. Run time 1 hour 39 minutes.