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Antonioni is one who doesn't inspire much in me, except with The Passenger, which I really responded to. Seems like the canonical directors always manage at least one film I really enjoy, no matter how unmoved the rest of them leave me.

Yeah, The Passenger (or Red Desert)is the closest Antonioni's come to inspiring affection out of me. The last shot of the former is basically what Antonioni could have been (his earliest features are pretty good though they're not the sort of things I'd have to watch at least once a year or something like that).

This film worked really well for me. It had a few awkward portions, particularly most of the high school scenes. But overall, I found the way the cinematography and sound design re-created her perspective was very effective and immersive for me. I definitely think Park Chan-wook can improve a bit, but I do like the direction he's taking his style in, and I think this has to be one of the better American debuts in recent times of a popular foreign director.

I thought Stoker was quite good. Then again, I'm up for every new Park Chan Wook film since I first saw Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, which remains a particular favorite. Park Chan Wook has said before that he decided to become a filmmaker after a single overpowering screening of Vertigo. At this point it almost goes without saying that Hitchcock is an important influence on all of his work, especially the extent to which both filmmakers toy with creating and shifting audience identification among various characters through plot twists and the selective revelation of various bits of information. Though the larger than life tone and content and the explicit sex and violence of Park Chan Wook's films are certainly post Hitchcock and even post De Palma in their depraved extremity, both Hitchcock's key idea and his visual motif of the close intertwining of acts of love and murder -- an aspect Truffaut remarked upon in the famous interview book -- remain a constant in Stoker as in other key Park Chan Wook works.

Park Chan Wook didn't write this one at all. But I'd say he successfully imbues what might have otherwise been a conventional and forgettable psychological thriller from the creator of Prison Break into what's really another exuberant burst of his brand of personal cinema.

It's a slow moody piece and many of the "twists" seem telegraphed (though I'm not sure they aren't meant to be, in part, so as to conceal others we aren't expecting), but it certainly held my attention, my friends' and everyone else's in the small crowd we saw it with. We were near a bunch of people who chatted up a storm right up the last minute of the trailers and I was worried I'd have to say something to them or just move, but you could hear a pin drop for the rest of the runtime in the whole of the cavernous Cinerama Dome.

It's such a pleasure to watch a film as directed as Stoker is. There's not a lazy or arbitrary image or sound anywhere to be found. Park Chan Wook is clearly thinking through every moment visually. There's a particularly expressionistic scene where the light from a swinging lamp is used to connect characters in different spaces by way of an interesting twist on an indelible moment from The Conformist. The sound work is equally expressionistic. There's one effect in particular with a pencil sharpener that made the hairs on the back of my neck stick up. I feel like seeing it twice for the moment to moment craft alone.

On the level of genre, the narrative turns out to be more impressive than it seems like it will. Essentially, this is finally a story about what would happen if

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Shadow of a Doubt's Uncle Charlie were right and he and his niece really did share everything, right down to their unquenchable compulsion to kill. There have been others who've tackled similar narratives recently -- of an older mentor spotting the deviance in his young apprentice -- from books by Peter Straub to Dexter's own origin story. But this strikes me as one of the more compelling attempts to explore this newish wrinkle in the psycho killer mythology.

YnEoS mentioned the high school scenes. Part of the awkwardness of those scenes for me has to do with this:

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India's emotional coldness plays first like a mixture of genuine mourning plus the baseline disinterest of any teenager, then maybe a bit stranger and more rebellious but still within the standard deviation of any given artsy goth chick, then a bit weirder still more curiously detached like somebody with mild Aspergers'.... Until it's finally revealed as the authentic pathological callous-unemotional reaction of a burgeoning psychopath. She's not just coming of age as a woman, but as a stone cold killer, just like her uncle before her. So for me, the film plays a neat trick in its handling of this "coming of age" arc both by way of -- and way far beyond -- cinematic conventions.

Loved it all around, a beautifully made film. Was a little afraid Park would have to tone down his usual outbursts of violence working with Western actors, but thankfully not really. Chung-hoon Chung's cinematography is stunning, all those eye close-ups - wow!

Oh, the wonders of sight and sound - few directors can stop and smell the [often decaying] roses like Park Chan-wook can. I had very few expectations for Stoker - I avoided reading much about it, didn't know what exactly I was getting myself into, and walked out thrilled that I'd seen one of my favorite films of the last few years, a small macabre masterpiece. The first two acts of the film seem particularly inspired by the Czech New Wave to me...

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the last shot even appears to be a winking, extremely cheeky reference to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders!

...and even though it might take you a little while to get into the flow of what Park is doing early on, the sheer hypnosis of this film will kick in at some point - there's a moment with a pencil sharpener that made my arm hair stand on end and sold me hook line and sinker. Stoker strikes me as a tasting menu of a movie, littered with strange and ingenious filmmaking amuse-bouches throughout. If one moment doesn't work for you or seems too off-the-wall, the next might knock you to the floor with its creativity. The film is very much about Mia Wasikowska's India for much of the second act, the viewer begins to mentally slow down, get more accustomed to her truly original rhythms - a metronome isn't used early on merely as window dressing - she's strange, mannered, and frightening; and can make your blood pressure drop to a trickle. There's a big campy story draped over all of this that really dominates the third act, moving Wasikowska to the background for a little while, but Matthew Goode is so excellent in this film that it's hard to complain about this. Where the hell has this guy been all my life? He turns in a practically revelatory performance here, chewing up more scenery than Nicole Kidman with his mere presence, even though Kidman's character is all about dramatic pomp, all red eyes and growling and shouting. She's not bad in the film - quite the opposite, but one gets the impression that she was delivering a lead performance to fill out what is very much a supporting role. It's certainly a brave one - her rather unfortunate plastic surgery and previously mentioned bloodshot eyes are turned up to 11 - if you've not seen her in a few years, brace yourself - this is a whole new Kidman - stylistically and visually. It's a performance that belongs in American Horror Story, though one second of Stoker is more successful at riding the line between camp/terror/arthouse than the entire run of that series.

Everything brings us back to Park and Wasikowska, though. There is not a dearth of creepy coming-of-age tales about young adult women, but if each new addition to that genre was as good at what it sets out to do as Stoker... well, if only. Wasikowska has totally arrived, and even when she's doing absolutely nothing but gazing into the distance, her presence on screen is so captivating that one never feels the need to internally shout "Do something!" - she completely anchors this film in a way that few actresses could, and uses every undersell to its fullest advantage. Park takes a first-time script from the star of FOX's Prison Break, Wentworth Miller that, if directed by your typical music video/horror film hack, would have been complete eye-rolling drivel, a lump of cinematic coal, and squeezes it into a diamond. It's not a bad script - but one gets the impression that it's as volatile as dynamite - in the wrong hands it could really explode into full-on flashback-y twist ending garbage. There is a twist here - after the most emotionally affecting scene (I'll admit to squeezing out a tear during this montage along with Wasikowska!) - but the reveal of the film's twist on the staircase is arguably its most memorable, gut-wrenching moment.

I could go on and on and on - just see this, please. One of those movies that might be doomed to May-style DVD cult status if FOX Searchlight doesn't give it the theatrical expansion that it so rightly deserves. Seek it out and plunk down without any preconceived notions of what you'll be getting, and I guarantee you'll walk out cold-blooded and delighted by how you spent the last two hours. I can't wait to fall under its spell all over again.

This movie is everything mfunk said it was and more. I can't say there are any direct references to Angela Carter, but it mines that same lush, creepy territory as the woman's stories. To add to the praise for Wasikowska, I'd say the depth of her talent lies not just in how she dominates the screen solo but in how she stands toe to toe with Goode. And blows him away. A superb performance.

And that's a tall order, Goode is a revelation here. I rewatched Oldboy last night and didn't like it much - it's so good for the first 30 minutes or so but becomes so busy and so baffling - Stoker is so carefully constructed that it is an entirely different experience. A director who has evolved in every respect.

I have never been a big fan of Park Chan-wook (I recall liking Oldboy, which I haven't seen since high school, but the rest of the Vengeance trilogy did nothing at all for me). I was surprised by how much I adored the first half of this film, but my admiration for it dropped steadily somewhere after the halfway marker. I can actually tell you the specific scene:

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The flashback, where he kills his brother as a child.

At that moment a good quarter of the film is dedicated to backtracking over needless explanations, turning what was previously poetic and loaded with suggestive meaning into something flat and prosaic. The others above have detailed many of the films best qualities, although I'd add its exceptional editing to the tally, which gave an electric charge to the dense tangle of relationships and impulses in the film. They've also drawn some compelling parallels to other films. The Czech New Wave is an odd point of comparison, but it certainly resembles some films from that movement.

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Valerie and her Week of Wonders is an especially apt reference point, for a variety of reasons. A scene earlier in the film also brought it directly to mind: the scene with the spider crawling up her leg. That on its own is a strong image, suggesting a fusion of her sexuality with a predatory instinct, but it also recalled a scene from Valerie and her Week of Wonders -- from the source novel, not the film. Actually, it's the novel's equivalent to the blood on the flower that mfunk mentioned: her first period. The book describes the sensation as a spider crawling down her leg.

Svankmajer also came to mind a few times, most explicitly when she goes down to the basement (which recalled Down to the Cellar).

From here on out I'll be getting into spoilers.

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So I loved the first half: the craftsmanship, the piano scene, the shoes, the sound design, the empty boxes and keys without locks, the absence of the father, and this tightly woven web of thoughts, desires, mysteries, memories, and sensations that revolves around India. I had a handful of minor issues (like the obnoxious opening credits sequence), but the rest of the film was so lush and satisfying I hardly acknowledged them. I think this part of the film reaches its pinnacle when she masturbates in the shower after the murderous ménage à trois in the forest, and that moment brings together everything I love about the film without tipping over into excess.

After that, everything tips over into excess.

I don't mind the course that the film takes, on the whole, but I found the flashbacks crushingly dull (and I would have preferred never to have seen her father); they were just over-the-counter, generic-brand thriller cliches. The part with the letters was laughable: the reveal is strong, but it comes RIGHT AFTER the setup. It could have had some impact if this relationship with her uncle already existed. Instead, it's pure, empty plot progression. I thought her choice to shoot him and save her mother was interesting, but the choice carries no weight. It seems like she's choosing to follow her father's course, finding some kind of outlet for her impulses (the choice to kill him, and using the rifle to do it, suggests this), but the coda at the end completely contradicts that sentiment and makes her choice appear arbitrary. I hated the ending. It threw away a satisfying resolution to swagger around with serial killer coolness.

I loved a lot about the film, and even the broad missteps in the second half didn't ruin the film for me, but I feel like it could have been a different and much more interesting film if they didn't veer so near to standard thriller territory at the end. I liked the portrait of the repressed yet curious girl discovering her potentially lethal sexuality; the narrative messiness and thematic blandness of the film's latter half just seemed to work against everything the first half was building toward.

Well, this is a new one: Fox's Blu-ray disc is useless in non-updated Blu-ray players. Tried to play it in my region-free modded Insignia and got an impassible blood red screen telling me Fox required me to update my player before it would even bother to read the disc (which you can't do on the Insignia, as it'd lose its region-free capability). I have never had this issue with any Blu-ray I've ever put in my machine, but a heads-up for those like me who can't update their otherwise perfectly functional players!

Oddly enough, when I tried it in one Blu-Ray player, it got to the Fox logo and then refused to load any further.

Wow, that sucks, sorry to hear that. Did you purchase it? At least it comes with an Ultraviolet copy.

I didn't know anything about Stoker going in except that I had seen the director's Oldboy ten years ago and didn't care for it at the time. Like a couple of the other posters here, while watching Stoker I wouldn't have guessed the director was anything but Eastern European had I not known beforehand that it was Park Chan-wook. That shoe montage is pure Svankmajer, the opening scenes with India solo in nature certainly do bring to mind Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, even the entire look and milieu seems Eastern European.

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And the spider!

And yes, it is also reminiscent of Angela Carter's novels, particularly The Magic Toyshop (which I just adored as a fourteen year-old and probably still would now).

That said, I'm surprised there isn't any discussion about how jaw-droppingly spectacular the use of apparel is. In fact, the dressing of India and Charlie significantly contributes to the film's effect on two two levels - a great first act fake-out (at least, for me it was - I can't believe I was the only one! More below...) and as a very visual line distinguishing India and Charlie from the other people in the narrative (except, to an extent, the mother).

So, what I call the first act fake-out...

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When the film started I assumed it was a period piece because India's blouse & tucked-in skirt, b&w saddle shoes, the grooming of her hair, even her reliance on pencils and paper, just hit me with the impression that I was watching a 1940's or 50's teenager. And Charlie, with his brown shoes and rust/cream sweaters over collared shirts & his slacks, looked like a late period college student or professor. Throughout the opening scenes - and the narrative in general - there is also a near absence of technology, the visual details are devoid of discernible modern design in favor of a kind of 1950's graphic for the props (right down to the cylinder case the ice cream comes in) and the house is furnished with mid-20th century decor - couches and chairs and plates and cups. Even the light green paint on the walls & (when outdoors) the creaky steel and wood playground seemed of another era. And when the first act was progressing I accepted it as a period piece but the fashion and design student in me was thinking about how bizarre and "found" the look was, i.e. it looked like the characters themselves shopped at vintage clothing stores and antique shops rather than the film actually feeling/looking like a period piece. The tone of the whole thing was off-kilter too - with a very sixties-sounding French pop song playing in one of the early scenes. India and Charlie & the milieu seemed "vintage-inspired" rather than vintage. But I just thought these were liberal stylistic embellishments - from the opening scene I could tell this had a fantasy aspect to it so I just went with it. Then Charlie holds up a glass of red wine to India's nose and says, "1994, the year you were born." I just blurted out "ha!" The direction of the film was suspect if intriguing but I still thought it was a period piece until that moment. Was I really the only one led by the direction in this way?

And about the clothing visually complimenting the plot development:

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I think the dressing of India and Charlie subtly illustrates the hereditary aspect of the narrative. India is not only a budding murderer with violent tendencies who once in a while lays in bed pretending she's making snow angels, she also dresses in the same vintage aesthetic as her uncle. The director or writer went with a vintage clothing perhaps to illustrate the homicidal motivation as timeless between relatives. Or something along those lines. I think this was a brilliant detail because typically for a narrative like this in contemporary cinema I feel like most directors would just go with an over-the-top Tim Burton-like gothic attire. Going with vintage-inspired clothing seems to me much more fascinating and eerie. And to my taste, it was cool to watch characters in a contemporary film don that style.

I do think Stoker slips off its rails toward the end.

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During the first 2/3, the Eastern European fairy tale vibe, the strange family aspect, the grotesqueries, the slight tilting of reality, & the whole vintage-inspired milieu suggested it would descend into a much more complex, fantasy-laden madness like Zulowski's Possession, and that's just not where it goes. Instead we have this sort of Natural Born Killers ending that wasn't really my cup of tea. I did find it interesting that India kills the family member who fully awakened her compulsion to murder, with her using the hunting rifle to do so which mirrors the flashback scene to where she went hunting with her father. But why does she let her Mom live?

That said, it's still an interesting film, particularly the direction.

Oh, and I liked the use of "Summer Wine," a song I've always loved. Toward the end of the scene featuring it the sound design even takes the big brassy crescendo and twists it into dissonance. The Philip Glass composed piano duet is also lovely. Clint Mansell's score seemed sort of like a modern take on the 80's Italian horror thing (albeit very low key), perhaps appropriately bringing to my mind Phenomena at certain points.

I'll echo the general praise this has gotten here. Nothing radical, but a class genre affair all around. I enjoyed it. Outside of the other references to Hitchcock and Czech/Polish psychological thrillers, I think that the questioned high-school scenes reminded me a lot of Lynch's Twin Peaks. Both in the general over-stylization of the teenagers behaviour to the "James"-like motorcycle riding bad-boy and his diner hang-out in the woods. Also saddle shoes immediately bring to mind Audrey Horne.

The Narrator Returns wrote:Oddly enough, when I tried it in one Blu-Ray player, it got to the Fox logo and then refused to load any further.

... and the new Die Hard movie did the same thing as Stoker. So a heads-up to Insignia owners, Fox titles are DOA from here forward

Lucky man

domino harvey wrote:

The Narrator Returns wrote:Oddly enough, when I tried it in one Blu-Ray player, it got to the Fox logo and then refused to load any further.

... and the new Die Hard movie did the same thing as Stoker. So a heads-up to Insignia owners, Fox titles are DOA from here forward

Yup, I learned that from the Fox discs of Lincoln, Killing Lincoln, Stoker on my Insignia. It is possible to upgrade the firmware, then downgrade it later. I tried, but it's not working right. I'm probably simply doing something wrong.

Well, now that I have a new fancy Blu-ray player capable of being updated, I finally got to sit down for this one and sadly I side with the disappointed. Mia Wasikowska remains one of the best young actresses working today and she is here, as always, a joy. But between this and Restless she's carving out a niche of being stuck in lousy films by respected directors (and now I fear the forthcoming Jarmusch!). While I wouldn't go quite as harsh as that Playlist review linked to on the first page, the reviewer's phrase "stylized to death" couldn't be more apt: this was a painfully indulgent mess of swishy camera work and too-cute transitions that got old almost immediately. The dopey Hitchcock reference inherent in the material is an early clue that we're in for a pastiche that doesn't have a clue why it's composed of all these weirdo parts and the final result seems manufactured to be "different" but it's just dull. Even within the world of the film I didn't buy almost anything that happened in this film. Other than Wasikowska and the nice number that plays over the final scene/credits, there wasn't much else here for me. And when you're praising the exit music, you know something's gone horribly awry...

In the aftermath of the Snowpiercer kerfuffle, it's been revealed that apparently Fox made Park Chan-wook cut 20 minutes from Stoker

If they'd cut another thirty minutes out (the last thirty minutes), it might have been a better film.

I kind of wonder what's missing, but at the same time, the film's problems are so fundamental that I hardly see how 20 minutes of extra footage could salvage it.

Whomp whomp it's "should've cut even more of this piece of junk!" time. Looking forward to some of the best internet jokes