It turns out that, sometimes, you really can be too smart – and stylish – for your own good. Stoker, a deliciously chilling family melodrama cross-bred with elements of a thriller/horror movie in high Hitchcockian style, is very good indeed. But every beautifully framed shot is just that: a little too clinical, a wee bit too measured, for the film and its characters to really make a true emotional connection with the audience.
The quiet, broody life of quiet, broody teenager India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) comes to an abrupt end when her father Richard (Dermot Mulroney) dies in a tragic car accident. Her poised but faintly useless mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) is a mess, and seems a prime candidate to fall for the appealing charms of Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), a relative India had no idea even existed. As she settles into her new existence as half an orphan, she finds herself wondering at Charlie’s eccentric – some might say creepy – ways.
For a film like this one, it won’t do to give too much of the plot away. Suffice to say that much of the thrills and friction in Stoker come from the ways the characters pace around one another, constantly testing, breaching and re-drawing boundaries. The clues about Uncle Charlie’s past start piling up, as his presence unlocks something in India – and Evelyn – that might well have been there all along.
Stoker marks director Park Chan-Wook’s debut English-language film, and sometimes it really feels that way. He peppers awkward dialogue and strange silences throughout the film, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Prison Break star Wentworth Miller’s script. But he does also bring an interesting, chilling aesthetic to the entire film, which is gorgeously shot – almost every frame translating into a still photograph of macabre and worrying beauty. He’s particularly good in infusing proceedings with a kind of calm dread, layering tension and horror into a moment as simple as a child lying on his back making a sand angel.
Park benefits greatly from a trio of strong, assured performances from his lead actors. Kidman has the smallest role, but she deploys her glacial bearing and bone structure to great effect – her Evelyn is a fragile, broken china doll of a woman, caught in a life and family she’s not quite sure how to handle. Goode, meanwhile, is thoroughly, wonderfully unsettling as Charlie, a man whose calmly gorgeous features hide a multitude of sins and secrets.
As for Wasikowska, this is perhaps her most powerful performance to date: she flits between child and woman as easily as India moves from being deathly concerned about Charlie to being utterly fascinated by him. It’s all the more impressive because her facial expressions barely change throughout the film, which helps keep viewers guessing all the way to the end.
What works rather less well is the chilly, detached environment in which Stoker firmly locates itself. That’s partly the point of the whole piece, of course – India’s life is a study in the detachment of the heart. However, as a result, it becomes rather difficult to care about the characters in any meaningful way. The film’s shockingly explosive conclusion suffers a little in the process. Our hearts simply aren’t quite as troubled by India’s strange connection with Uncle Charlie as they could be.
Nevertheless, this is a creepy, worrying thriller that will bring Hitchcock very effectively to mind – a film that eschews cheap scares and creaky monsters to delve into the human psyche, and suggest that there is nothing more horrifying that what dwells within.
Basically: This film doesn’t stoke the embers so much as freeze them – but for all its cool clinical detachment, it remains a gripping, disturbing watch that might bother you for days afterward.
shawneofthedead 