Park Chan-Wook’s Stoker– is Stylish and Surreal, Until the Script Undermines its Virtues

Stoker, 10 Years Later

By the end of 2013, three of South Korea’s most notable filmmakers made the trek to the US of A to make their English-language debut – first up was Kim Jee-woon’s less-than-stellar Schwarzenegger vehicle The Last Stand. In a few months, Bong Joon-ho made his stab at Western glory with Snowpiercer. Park Chan-wook, meanwhile, seemed like the most natural fit of the three for a transition into American cinema, and not only because his Oldboy was likely the most widely seen of the filmmakers’ combined oeuvres. An ostentatious stylist with a penchant for ultraviolence, his movies are nothing if not relentless in their pursuit of insidious thrills. Where Jee-woon’s film felt curiously less grand in scale than his last Korean film, The Good, The Bad, The Weird, Stoker at least had the benefit of being an aesthetic marvel on the level of Oldboy or Thirst. Predictably, it’s the screenplay that lets the enterprise down.

After a hallucinatory credits montage, we meet the Stokers as they bury their patriarch (Dermot Mulroney): 18-year-old India (Mia Wasikowska), constantly restless as she enters adulthood; her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman), and mysterious uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode and his neverending glare), lurking in the periphery. India is already known as a bit of a strange bird, all black hair and standoffish composure, and the appearance of Charlie only makes her the object of further derision from her classmates. Their jeers are based in truth, as it turns out, as Charlie places designs on Evelyn and, seemingly, India as well. Why has Charlie appeared all of a sudden, after years spent “in Europe”?

The downfall of Stoker is that it thinks we want or need the answer to that question. For most of its first two acts, the film is happy to exist as production design and cinematography porn, all elaborate match cuts, fussy framing, and precisely lit beautiful people. Those familiar with Chan-wook’s filmography will enjoy the added dimension of waiting for this at-first chaste film to descend (or ascend) into psychosexual chaos. At first, when that shift occurs, it’s welcome, especially as it’s easily seen as part and parcel of the film’s subjective, surreal style. But before long it becomes clear that Wentworth Miller’s script is actually taking proceedings on a boringly literal level, leading to a third act that drastically undermines what works about the rest of the film. It’s as though Miller watched David Gordon Green’s Undertow – another subjective coming-of-age film with genre leanings and an affinity for nature – but decided that Green’s film should have taken its treasure-hunting plot device more seriously. (It also, clearly, borrows liberally from Shadow of a Doubt, only without the luxury of actual suspense.)

The result is a movie that constantly threatens to snap into place, getting its blend of campy family turmoil and elegant style just right. Still, that synergy remains frustratingly out of reach throughout. Chan-wook’s usual DP, Chung-Hoon Chung, does a typically stellar job throughout (even overdoing the opulence in passing moments, like a shot of Kidman moving through the Stoker estate that seemingly deliberately echoes a Chanel ad), but the visual dynamism only distracts for so long. Stoker is never boring, nor insulting, but the degree to which it turns out to be just another rote thriller is disappointing, and not only in the context of its pedigree.

Simon Howell

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on March 14, 2013.