India lives with her distant mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) in a large creepy house complete with a shadowy black cellar with flickering lights and an enormous old fashioned freezer. Outside of mutual contempt for each other, their only shared hobby appears to be obsessing over the same men. Mother and daughter are both mourning the family patriarch Richard (Dermot Mulroney) who burned to death in his car and they're both enthralled by "Uncle Charlie" (Matthew Goode), his younger brother, who comes for the funeral and stays awhile. If his name doesn't tip you off (Uncle Charlie is a nod to Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt) the direction will. Charlie is not right. Charlie is not good. Charlie's eyes never leave the Stoker women. He's like a stalker who's been handed keys and a guest room instead of the customary restraining order.
Charlie is played by perfect specimen Matthew Goode, which immediately tips the odds against propriety. (The odd psychosexual screenplay is by another beautiful man, the actor Wentworth Miller from Prison Break). Park Chan-wook and Goode point to Charlie's sinister nature right from the start but the movie is curiously withholding about the hows and whys of this family's strange arms-length-or-further-please distance from one another. One early scene involving Jacki Weaver (who we just saw at the Oscars), another distant relative, is hilariously tense as the camera continually darts and circles around the family at a dining room table where no one appears to be eating, supping only on their distaste for each other. Stoker even plays coy with the "whens" of the shit going down for far longer than you'd expect or might have patience for.
Which is not to say that it doesn't have its thrills. Goode rules the film with those increasingly spooky unblinking eyes, but the entire cast is compelling. While Nicole Kidman fails to make a full character from the vaguely written Evelyn — the movie forgets about her for too long — she's such a compelling screen presence that it feels like a gift when the movie hands her a late film monologue just to see her tear into something before the credits roll.
But for such a bloody film (yes, multiple bodies will pile up) it's curiously bloodless, only coming alive in brief kicks… all of them a contradictory mixture of the movie's absurd physical beauty (Production Design Porn alert) and morally repugnant storytelling (is it just me or is Hollywood obsessed with stories in which we the audience are meant to identify with killers instead of fearing them and rooting for their victims to escape?). I won't give away the goods or even the sick character arcs but I will say that I hated the ending. It's not so much a twist as a delayed inevitability given the echoes of Thirst but I was hoping for something more ambiguous and less distasteful. In fact, I might have praised Stoker for its sophisticated horror thrills (one death involving a telephone call is going to give me nightmares from its simplicity) had it ended just one scene earlier on an absolutely killer shot of a long blood-stained trail, a sense memory of dragging a body through a home to show it the door. The moment works beautifully as satire (never outstay your welcome), creepy horror (another dead body?) and satisfying conclusion.
But the ending ruined it for me. I left Stoker feeling only queasy, which I suppose is a testament to its strength as a horror film. But to what end? I prefer bloody movies with cathartic undercurrents (Carrie), sneaky subversiveness (Let the Right One In), gut-wrenching morality (Thirst), or the sheer buoyancy of great thrills (Silence of the Lambs) none of which Stoker left me with despite its meticulous beauty and fine acting. Later that night, I came home and thought about the boxes of mystery swag from Stoker's PR team that keep arriving. At first I thought they were cute but now they're just creeping me out. I am suddenly thankful that Park chan-wook is out there making pictures rather than killing people. I'm not suggesting that this globally renowned director is a latent serial killer but IF HE IS his films are veritably perfect kill trophies, fetishized imagined mementos from the lives he could have snuffed out instead of picking up a movie camera.
P.S. If art/horror isn't your thing, are you still catching up with Oscar? Last Sunday was quite a night, eh?
Nathaniel Rogers would live in the movie theater but for the poor internet reception. He blogs daily at the Film Experience. Follow him on Twitter @nathanielr.
