Stoker isn't the most original piece of cinema you'll see this year, but the odds are it'll be the most archly beautiful. The film is one shot after another of hauntingly disturbing imagery, all of it as immaculately presented as the family of the title. At the start of the film the Stoker's numbers have diminished by one as India's father is killed in a car accident. Stepping in to fill the void, to look after both India (Mia Wasikowska) and her mother (Nicole Kidman), is Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), a man they didn't even know existed. Anyone who's seen Shadow of a Doubt will find that set-up eerily familiar, right down to the name of the uncle, but the story quickly goes places even darker, if no less Hitchcockian.
It's strange, and rather refreshing, to watch a film in which the cards are all laid down in the first five minutes. Everything you need to know about each character is given to you before their first scene is over; there are plenty of little wrinkles to their story, slowly revealed, but they'll fit neatly in with what you've already learnt. This is because Stoker's more interested in power dynamics: the scenes with the family at dinner, feigning civility as they pressure and maneuver, are unbearably tense precisely because we know (for the most part) who everyone is and what they're after. That tension is, more often than not, broken by director Chan-Wook Park's dark sense of humour; and the moment the tension's been relieved he gets right on with building it back-up. It's highly effective, and it'd make Hitchcock proud.
Stoker often feels like a modern retelling of a forgotten Brothers Grimm tale. The story certainly has a simple timeless quality to it. In keeping with that - except for the occasional shot of a mobile phone, and a sheriff's car that must have been made in the last quarter of a century - there's little to tell you where we are between 1960 and 2013. I keep wanting to refer to it as a fable, but a fable needs to be about animals, mythical creatures, and the like. Perhaps it's a parable. Both are (comparatively) short, have a broad sweep to their story telling, and linger in the consciousness because the idea at their core is so simple and compelling.
Which is to say: I rather liked it.
Overall: 8/10
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