Stoker (2013)

Simply Perfect

Nice effects though.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Psychological thriller (with a touch of horror) set mainly in an impressive, large country house about the arrival of an unknown and mysterious uncle after the death of India Stoker's father. Visually this film was incredibly well shot and made great use of it's gothic location. Certainly touches of Hitchcock. None of the three leads are American but all are convincing (I suppose Nicole Kidman does count as one, but I've often found that Australian/British actors can struggle with American accents). There's lots of suspense and intrigue, and the film never drags. The violence is pretty brutal. I did have mixed feelings about the end, without giving anything away but I felt that it wasn't entirely satisfactory. Like my title says, this is no masterpiece but come on, guys rating this just 1/10. Really?? The majority of what I consider to be bad movies will get a 2 or 3/10, only the worst of the worst deserve a 1. And believe me I have sat through MANY bad films. And this is a million miles from them.

If you have read the original screenplay written by Wentworth Miller, you will probably not like the movie. It feels as though the actors were not given enough time to process the characters they were supposed to be playing. Even the performance of Mia Wasikowska, who I admire as an actress, was lacking.They have not changed the script very much but I feel as though the tone and setting have been changed - and not for the better. The car scene (where Richard Stoker informs Charles that he has to love him a little less now) which is greatly influenced by Miller's own experience, was completely messed up. Both Mathew Goode and Dermot Mulroney fail (miserably) to capture the intensity of guilt, frustration, anger, humiliation, hurt and anguish that I was hoping to see.It looks to me like the entire movie was shot hurriedly. It feels like the characters are merely reciting their lines - there is no emotion behind those dialogue deliveries. Since the cast has given amazing performances in the past, I can only deduce that they chose the wrong director.All in all, I would suggest that you read the original screenplay as written by Wentworth Miller rather than watch the movie. The screenplay is a thousand times more enjoyable.

The dead man's daughter is the only one who notices the stranger. He is standing some distance away from the funeral, watching her. Later, at the reception, her mother is immediately charmed. 'India,' she beams, 'come and say hello to your uncle Charlie'. The stranger turns around, smiling.What follows is a dark and inventive subversion of the coming-of-age genre, as eighteen year old India realises that there is something menacing about this uncle that she never knew existed, and that it is precisely this suggestion of the dangerous which draws her to him. 'Have you ever seen a photograph of yourself,' she explains, 'taken from an angle you don't get to see when you look in the mirror. And you think, that's me! That's also me!' In her father's younger brother India finds echoes of herself, and what she comes to understand about the two of them both fascinates and disturbs her.This tension of being attracted to something that you know is wrong is masterfully expressed through a camera which keeps zooming in as it moves away, and zooming out as it draws closer. Like India, we linger when we should be leaving. We hesitate as we approach. And the images that we see on screen are very beautiful, showing us the world from an original, compelling point of view. The opening of an eye is matched to the opening of a piano lid. Long hair transforms into long grass waving in the wind.What you end up thinking of Stoker largely depends on whether or not you agree with something Oscar Wilde said (about books, but he was writing before film was invented). According to Wilde, 'there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.' To say that Stoker is a well shot film is an understatement, but the subject matter that it renders so beautifully is as perverse as can possibly be. Violence is not only aestheticised, but sexualised. And those compelled to hurt others are presented as unique, almost elite human beings. 'I wonder if you too' Charlie tells his niece, 'can hear what others cannot hear, see what they cannot see'. Blood drips off small white flowers.Worst of all, Stoker ultimately concludes that destructive urges run in your blood – for India's mother is an outcast who can never truly belong to the family that she married into – and that the mature thing to do is to give up individual agency and simply accept your own biological determinism: 'Just as a flower does not choose its colour, we are not responsible for what we have come to be,' India whispers in the opening monologue. 'Only once you realise this do you become free. And to become adult, is to become free'.Nevertheless, I think those who decry Stoker for glorifying violence are missing the point. Chan-wook Park's film is really about seduction, and it is us the viewers who are being seduced. Wilde was writing at a time when an 'immoral book' was simply one with a hint of sex. Today, sex is all over the screen, and the bar for immorality is lower. But seduction is at its most thrilling if it has an element of transgression. What can a film still show us nowadays that, to our dismay, makes us realise that we like what we see? I suggest you watch Stoker for yourself and find out. I for one enjoyed it immensely.

Stoker has been on my watchlist for so long I don't even remember what made me interested in it in the first place. I'd say it's because of Park Chan-wook but I'm not so sure if that was the original reason for that. However, now that I haven't really written about movies for a while I thought I'd watch something and decided to go with Stoker.The story is astonishing, and so is the structure. The whole film is somewhat creepy from the beginning, but it's not so straight-forward with it. The film begins as "muted creepy". While the audience sees that something is clearly up with Charlie, the audience doesn't necessarily know what it is. He seems normal, but we've all seen movies, we know he isn't. It's just hard to realise before it's shoved into our faces and we know. Also that really disturbing atmosphere is enhanced by weirdly intense scenes. They don't necessarily need to be that intense, but they are, and that helps create the ambiance of the film. Also while parts of the "plot twist" were easy to predict, some of them came as a total surprise. They definitely were disturbing twists, just like in Oldboy, but still at least partly delightfully unpredictable. Somewhere during the film I forgot that it was Wentworth Miller who wrote this. Either the story is similar to what I'm used to from Park Chan-wook or his directing just made it look so clearly like his movie, but I kept forgetting who actually wrote Stoker. Visually this movie is just as enchanting as Oldboy or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. It's marvellous. It's unconventional, yet every shot seems to be beautiful, even if they are extremely gruesome. Chung Chung-hoon is an excellent cinematographer. Stoker goes to same category with other Park Chan-wook movies I've seen. It is gruesome, disturbing yet extremely fascinating. If you like films like that, Stoker and Park Chan-wook's movies in general are the right films for you.