Starring Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman
Directed by Park Chan-wook
While South Koreas Park Chan-wook is best known on these shores for Oldboy the middle chapter of his storied Vengeance Trilogy his first foray into American filmmaking bears a stronger resemblance to 2009s Thirst, a vampire movie that explored human natures darker aspects. Unsurprisingly, a change of scenery hasnt altered Parks worldview in the slightest.
With her familys isolated home serving as a cocoon, India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska, alluringly sullen) undergoes a metamorphosis that sees her shed her ill-fitting humanity and emerge a remorseless predator. The catalysts for such a transformation? The death of her loving father (Dermot Mulroney) and subsequent arrival of her sociopath uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode, a snake in mans clothing).
While Charlie toys with the affections of his brothers emotionally fragile widow (Nicole Kidman), its evident that its dour India, with her penchant for Victorian aesthetics and contempt for social mores, that he views as an intimate. She simply needs is a little grooming when it comes to ghastly violence.
Directing his first feature that he didnt write himself (the script is by Wentworth Miller), Park nevertheless understands every fibre of the material and knows how best to push the twisted chamber play to its limits.
Collaborating with longtime cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, Park employs jarring camera movements, odd angles, and off-centre framing to illustrate the shifting dynamics between his unstable characters.
Such formal bravura keeps the viewer off-balance and furthers the sickening sense that the only way that equilibrium will be restored to this world is by India accepting her true calling. With Park, comfort is always a dish best served cold.
Curtis Woloschuk
