Maynard Morrissey's HORROR MOVIE DIARY: STOKER

STOKER

German Title:

Stoker - Die Unschuld endet

USA / UK, 2013

Director: Park Chan-wook

10/10

When Asian directors go to America to shoot English-language films for an English-language audience, it mostly ends in a cinematic disaster. Look at Hideo Nakata ("The Ring 2"), Fruit Chan ("Don't Look Up"), or Takashi Shimizu ("The Grudge 1&2"). Fortunately, that is not the case with Park Chan-wook. I'm not an expert of his work and I've only seen three of his movies ["Oldboy", "Thirst" and the 'Cut'-segment in "Three: Extremes"], and although these are three really, really fantastic works of art... I can't help saying that I liked "Stoker" a lot more.

"Stoker" is the first movie this year that completely and utterly blew me away. My expectations weren't that high. The trailer looked interesting and the plot sounded cool, but I wasn't really into it - and then I sat there in the theater, when suddenly the movie came up to me and hit me like a Tsunami. Chan-wook created a stylish, intense, unsettling, emotional and thought-provoking tour-de-force, perfect from the breathtaking opening until to the powerfully brutal last shots.

The movie is basically a psychological mystery-thriller, a bit in the vein of Hitchcock's 40s / 50s murder mysteries, but way darker, way more intriguing and way more bizarre, thanks to the captivating plot, the highly intelligent and masterfully crafted screenplay by Wentworth Miller (yup, the one from "Prison Break"), and the incredibly powerful visual language of Chan-wook's long-time partner Chung Chung-hoon who provides us with a staggering and stunningly detailed cinematography, at times so awesome, I actually haven't seen anything like that before. Plus: another fascinatingly beautiful score by the great

Clint Mansell.

Chan-wook handles his cast with great skill and bravura. Mia Wasikowska's acting is intense as hell, her mimics reminded me a lot of goddess Isabelle Huppert. Matthew Goode gives the most impressive psychopath since Anthony Perkins in "Psycho", Nicole Kidman delivers one of her best performances in a long time, and Jacki Weaver is simply fabulous as talky but suspicious aunt.

Highlights: the erotic piano-scene, the weird shower-masturbation, every single scene with the little spider, every single scene in the creepy cellar, the pencil attack, the phone-booth kill, Kidman's monologue about "why we have children", and the superbly suspenseful finale.

"Stoker" is an absolutely outstanding masterpiece and so far, one of the greatest movies this year. It will leave you stoked.

Source:

http://www.horrormoviediary.net/2013/04/stoker.html

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