Stoker (2013)

Directed by: Park Chan-wook

Written by: Wentworth Miller

The death of India Stoker's father means her uncle Charlie, of whom she had never heard of, makes a visit. Charlie moves in to keep company to India's emotionally unstable mother, But India starts to question the motives for Charlie's presence. 

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Stoker has been on my watchlist for so long I don't even remember what made me interested in it in the first place. I'd say it's because of Park Chan-wook but I'm not so sure if that was the original reason for that. However, now that I haven't really written about movies for a while I thought I'd watch something and decided to go with Stoker.

The story is astonishing, and so is the structure. The whole film is somewhat creepy from the beginning, but it's not so straight-forward with it. The film begins as "muted creepy". While the audience sees that something is clearly up with Charlie, the audience doesn't necessarily know what it is. He seems normal, but we've all seen movies, we know he isn't. It's just hard to realise before it's shoved into our faces and we know. Also that really disturbing atmosphere is enhanced by weirdly intense scenes. They don't necessarily need to be that intense, but they are, and that helps create the ambiance of the film. 

Also while parts of the "plot twist" were easy to predict, some of them came as a total surprise. They definitely were disturbing twists, just like in Oldboy, but still at least partly delightfully unpredictable. 

Somewhere during the film I forgot that it was Wentworth Miller who wrote this. Either the story is similar to what I'm used to from Park Chan-wook or his directing just made it look so clearly like his movie, but I kept forgetting who actually wrote Stoker. 

Visually this movie is just as enchanting as Oldboy or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. It's marvellous. It's unconventional, yet every shot seems to be beautiful, even if they are extremely gruesome. Chung Chung-hoon is an excellent cinematographer. 

Stoker goes to same category with other Park Chan-wook movies I've seen. It is gruesome, disturbing yet extremely fascinating. If you like films like that, Stoker and Park Chan-wook's movies in general are the right films for you. 

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

9 / 10

Also I know have a letterboxd account. Most of the stuff I but there is the same as in here or in IMDb, but sometimes my shorter reviews are there quicker than in here, considering I post those at the end of each month.