Park Chan-wook's long-awaited English-language debut is a gorgeously mounted family mystery dressed up as a gothic fairytale. The atmosphere is suffocatingly effective, and if the scarcity of shocks leaves some viewers feeling cheated (Park created the South Korean Vengeance trilogy after all), this misdirection is also one of the movie's great strengths.
Stoker is a puzzle. Its lush visuals, allied with Clint Mansell's eerily dynamic score, are MacGuffins to some degree. After Sunday night's world premiere at Sundance, Chan-wook spoke of his admiration for Alfred Hitchcock and homage courses through Stoker like, well, blood.
Mia Wasikowska plays the lead role of India, a curious, seemingly unknowable young woman whose world is turned upside down after the mysterious death of her father Richard Stoker (Dermot Mulroney). India and Richard were very close and his demise hits her hard.
Then, from out of the blue, comes eccentric Uncle Charlie. He pops up at Richard's funeral and plants himself atop a nearby tomb, from where he stares down at the proceedings with an outsider's gaze. Charlie is played by Matthew Goode with seductive power (the part was originally intended for Colin Firth). He inveigles himself into the household and before long is charming the pants off India's mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). Kidman delivers another performance of potent sultriness after her much-publicised turn in Lee Daniels' Cannes curio The Paperboy.
India and Evelyn are frosty cohabitees connected only by blood. The arrival of Uncle Charlie heats things up a bit, even if India does not share her mother's enthusiasm for the house guest. The interloper storyline is a familiar one and yet this is where Park, working from a clever screenplay by Wentworth Miller, begins to play.
If this is a fairytale, then India, with her lank, brown hair and pale colouring is Cinderella. And yet she could be Alice, in which case we must question the truth of all she sees. Evelyn fits nicely into the role of the wicked stepmother. But who exactly is Prince Charming?
Uncle Charlie will go to extreme lengths to protect the family. He's a dangerous presence, yet as time goes by India is drawn into his orbit. There is a similar dynamic in another Sundance entry this year, Drake Doremus's impressive Breathe In, but the interaction here is far more ominous, sensuous and revelatory.
Literary references and symbolism abound in Stoker. You can get tied up trying to figure out who is what. That is the idea. All the clues are there. You just have to look closely.
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