On the couch

DVD REVIEW

Stoker is bad.

 

Not bad as in it’s not a fantastic film – it is. Nor bad like the young folks used to say it, meaning good – although it is. Park Chan-wook’s intricately fashioned thriller is bad in an “abandon hope all ye who enter here” sort of way. There are no innocents here. Only broken people fracturing further under the pressures of grief, guilt and madness.

The story by Wentworth “him off Prison Break” Miller opens with death. Dermot Mulrony’s to be precise. The pater familias of the Stoker family – a successful architect – comes to an unfortunate and slightly mysterious car-crashy end, leaving his wife Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) and daughter India (Mia Wasikowska) alone in their enormous country house with very little mother-daughter affection to keep them company.

It’s quickly clear that while the emotionally brittle Evie wasn’t too close to her departed hubby, India was very much the apple of daddy’s eye and the young one, just turned 18, drifts around the house like Wednesday Addams if she weren’t a cartoon version of a goth and was just a very sad, very odd young woman.
The intense discomfort of the ladies’ frosty relationship – India seems closer to her housekeeper, her shoes or her memories than to her mam – is shaken up when Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode looking like Satan if he did Abercrombie commercials) appears.

India was unaware she even had an uncle and while Evie’s heard of him, she’s never met him on account of all his time spent travelling.

Uncle Charlie is an odd sort, in a perfectly mannered, infinitely helpful sort of way, and Evie is easily taken in by his charms. India is not so impressed, unconvinced by anything about him but unsure what or why.
As Charlie’s stay gets longer, however, matters start to creepify and some family secrets and home truths are revealed. This may sound like a cop-out wrapped in a cliché but to say any more would really ruin the pleasure of how odd, unnerving and unpredictable Stoker is.

Understated in the best possible way, every scene is played out with the minimum of fuss, a trait that heightens the ever-present tension.

Is this when Charlie’s going pull off his skin and reveal himself to be a gerbil-eating lizard? Is this when India finally cracks and brains her needy mommy with an antique hair brush? Will that glass of wine be the one to finally push Evie to start threatening the potted plants with a poker? None of this ever happens but the slow, steady build to something of ill-aspect is masterfully wrought.

Beautifully shot, virtually every frame of Stoker is like a little portrait of elegant American gothic. Just as picture perfect are the performances from the three leads.

While Goode and Kidman’s characters are comprehensible – one’s a bit shady and possible evil while the other’s a bit desparate and not really cut out for motherhood – it’s Wasikowska who is the cypher at the film’s centre.

India is neither the stereotype of the teen brat nor that of the typical high school weirdo. Although she has both chords to her character. What’s going on inside her head is only hinted at, never explicitly revealed.
While the world of the film seems to make the most sense through her eyes, there are enough moments of peculiarity – flashbacks, shards of memories, a fondness for shoes and the macabre – that mark her as being not entirely reliable as a narrator as one might like. The girl who once played Alice in Wonderland is all grown up and impressive as hell.

Comparisons to any of Hitchcock’s best are understandable and richly deserved given the sense of macabre and masterfully-managed slow burn of tension.
Stoker might be Park Chan-wook’s first English language film but, given its brilliance it’s certainly not going to be his last.

Feel free to fill the time till his next release watching his back catalogue however, particularly Old Boy. You won’t be disapppointed.

In other diversions Welcome to the Punch – a bit of Brit cops and robbers – is the sort of thing you’d expect the likes of James McAvoy and Mark Strong to know better than to involve themselves with.
Apparently they don’t, however, so you get 90 minutes of McAvoy as Max, a cop who’s seen better days chasing his nemesis, super-criminal Jacob Sternwood as the latter returns to London to track down his son’s killers.

D’you think the two searches will in some way tie into the seemingly unrelated politics/gun crime sub-plot at some point? If not, you’re fired.
A half-assed, barely comprehensible story does a massive disservice to a great cast. The only moments even worth opening your eyes for are the few scenes the leads share with each other or the great Peter Mullan and they are fewer and farther between than anyone would like.