Director Park Chan-Wook of the vengeance trilogy brings his English-language debut in the form of Stoker. Starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode this dark chiller follows a mother and daughter, Evelyn (Kidman) and India (Wasikowska), shortly after the death of their husband/father. The estranged brother of the deceased, Charles (Goode), invites himself to stay with the grieving pair and in doing so shakes up a number of the darker elements that lie within the pairs personalities.
Those of you that are familiar with Chan-Wook’s work will be used to the graphic violence that litter all his films, Stoker is a much more measured affair, the violence boiling under the surface and only at the odd moment does it boil over and spill onto the screen. What replaces any constant violence is superbly directed tension. All three of the main cast are pitch perfect in their performances all of whom clearly have rather large skeletons in their closets that they aren’t letting out. The tension is intensified by the stylistic framing of every shot we see. Awkward close-ups and icy stares form the tone of the whole piece, there is not a second where it doesn’t look awesome. The same goes for the use of sound. I have never noticed sound being a stand-out element in a film before but Stoker is the first, there are moments of sound the create an itch under the surface of your skin that can only be scratched by finding out whats making these characters tick.
The only thing that lets this film down, really, is the run-of-the-mill storyline, which is the main thing that will leave you doubting how awesome it actually is, but the way it has been put together so artistically that actually it doesn’t matter.
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