Stoker

We screened this last week.  Somehow I missed the film when it was on general release, and I when I started reading up on it to write my notes I thought it looked good.

I was not mistaken.

Here are my notes:

Stoker

USA 2012                    99 minutes

Director:                      Park Chan-wook

Starring:                        Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode

Awards and Nominations

• Seven wins
• 25 nominations

“The South Korean director Park Chan-wook makes an eye-catching English-language debut with his outrageous quasi-remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 thriller Shadow of a Doubt. Where Hitchcock's original injected a small drop of poison into picket-fence suburbia, Stoker stands proud as a full-blown gothic nightmare. ”

Xan Brooks

Following the death of India’s father, her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) who she never knew existed comes to live with her and Evelyn, her unstable mother (Nicole Kidman).  India (Mia Wasikowska) comes to suspect that this mysterious charming man has ulterior motives while at the same time becoming increasingly infatuated with him.

The script is by Wentworth Miller, best known as an actor in the TV series Prison Break (2005), although he submitted the script under a pseudonym, explaining later “I just wanted the scripts to sink or swim on their own”.  Miller described his story as “a horror film, a family drama and a psychological thriller”.   The title Stoker suggests a link to Bram Stoker, but in the context of the story Miller’s debt to Dracula lies more in the relationship between Charlie and India, echoing the corrupting influence that Dracula has on Lucy Westenra, rather than on any overt vampire references.  A more obvious source for Miller’s script is Hitchcock’s 1943 psychological thriller Shadow of a Doubt.   

In an interview Miller freely acknowledged this debt:  

"The jumping-off point is actually Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. So, that's where we begin, and then we take it in a very, very different direction”. 

 

He emphasises the point by giving India’s uncle the same name as that of Joseph Cotten’s psychopathic killer in the Hitchcock film.

This film is South Korean Park Chan-wook’s first English language feature, after making his name in South Korea as the writer and director of Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), the so-called Vengeance Trilogy.  Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival where Quentin Tarantino, a great fan, lobbied hard for it to be given the Palme d’Or.

Here's the trailer: