The theme here is hellfire and damnation but with an austere lack of emotion and urgency.
The Stoker’s blend of deadpan comedy, satirical bite, historical allegory, sexual violence and bewilderingly jaunty music makes for such an uneasy and uneven film it’s difficult to work out what exactly it’s trying to achieve.
Ultimately The Stoker is slight, and like its characters and setting, hangs between modern gangster films such as Killing Them Softly and A Bittersweet Life and the slow-burning Soviet cinema Balabanov throws into the mix.
Full of idiosyncratic, almost suicidal directorial choices, yet weirdly this film cuts to the heart of its country.
A potent black comedy with the gentle touch of a razor blade.
Skyrabin's unthinking complicity will not last for ever in a tale that reminds you of the early films of Aki Kaurismaki.
Stange, dark and clever, with a sense of Rabelaisian excess and moral murkiness that’s tempered by an ambiguous but unexpectedly forceful moral message, the film address personal responsibility, cruelty and creativity in shady times, via characters who are colourful but never caricatured.
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