After India's father dies, her Uncle Charlie, who she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her unstable mother. She comes to suspect this mysterious, charming man has ulterior motives and becomes increasingly infatuated with him.
By the film's end it seems apparent that no underlying purpose or thoughtful idea has actually driven this relentless, hollow mess.
Stoker mixes beauty and blood to shocking effect.
A difficult one to get a handle on, Stoker is a woozy blend of horror, thriller and drama. Visually, it’s compelling, but story-wise it’s not able to keep us interested.
Stoker is a disappointing film which could, with work, be good piece, however, too many different themes and somewhat conventional plot points have lead to the creation of a film that simply cannot live up to the hype generated by Chan-Wook’s previous work.
Fundamentally this is an exercise in genre and overripe style, but if only one in 20 American horror films were this well made.
An intense mix of horror, thriller and domestic drama, this is exquisite filmmaking.
Flashes of talent, but profoundly vicious.
Sure, it’s strange, beautiful, stylish and at times wilfully confounding, but it’s also like nothing else out there at the moment – and that singularity, together with the fact that Park hasn’t simply done the easy thing and regurgitated his most celebrated work for an English language audience, makes it all the more fascinating.
The central story of Stoker has been told many times before and with much more accomplishment.
It feels like a cult classic waiting to happen. I hope it does. I think it will. It should.
The brutality just below the surface of Stoker doesn't make it easy to like, and its head-in-the-clouds plotting is still less easy to believe. But it does have the bewitching derangement of a proper Gothic nightmare.
The dark secrets at the heart of the family are not going to stay hidden for ever, although they are all too easy to second guess in this chilly, blood-spattered slice of Grand Guignol.
Beneath all the silk and powder, it transpires that Stoker is actually nothing more than a schlocky, screeching B-movie; an animated skeleton sent up to spook us. It's at its most entertaining when it shakes off its clothes.
Stoker may be eggshell-thin, but it's a refined anomaly that's hard to dismiss.
This wild, watchable, relatively brief, deeply annoying thriller is the disappointing American debut of the gifted Korean film-maker Park Chan-wook.
Park Chan-wook--Korean director on his Hitchcockian thriller Stoker
Stoker director Park Chan-wook: 'In knowing yourself, you can liberate yourself'.
Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee from Friday March 1, 2013, until Thursday March 21, 2013. More info: www.dca.org.uk
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow from Friday March 22, 2013, until Thursday March 28, 2013. More info: http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre/
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