Star Rating: 2.5/5
Director:
- Chan-Wook Park – Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance
Producers:
- Ridley Scott – Body of Lies, Prometheus, Welcome to the Punch
- (The late) Tony Scott – The Taking of Pelham 123, Unstoppable, Out of the Furnace
Cast:
- Nicole Kidman – Eyes Wide Shut, Rabbit Hole, Before I Go To Sleep
- Mia Wasikowska – Defiance, Alice In Wonderland, The Double
- Matthew Goode – Match Point, Watchmen, Belle
- Jacki Weaver – The Five-Year Engagement, Silver Linings Playbook, Haunt
- Phyllis Somerville – Little Children, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Double
- Lucas Till – X-Men: First Class, Battle: Los Angeles, X-Men: Days of Future Past
- Alden Ehrenreich – Twixt, Beautiful Creatures, Running Wild
Music Composer:
- Clint Mansell – Requiem For A Dream, Black Swan, Ghost In The Shell
What is the purpose of film trailers and movie marketing campaigns? The answer might seem ostensibly obvious: to whet people’s appetites to buy cinema tickets and, eventually, to entice them to buy DVDs. While this understandably keeps the wheels of the Hollywood machine spinning, does this mean that trailers and marketing campaigns should give too much of a film’s plot away and/or misrepresent a movie in the interests of money? Indeed, some of Stoker’s problems stem from its trailer and its advertisements.
Charlie (Matthew Goode) watching look like a stalker as his niece, India (Mia Wasikowska), walks to school.
Stoker begins with the death of Richard Stoker (Dermot Mulroney). Not long after his funeral, Richard’s daughter, India (Mia Wasikowska), learns that her father had a creepy brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode), and that he will be moving into the house. He has been invited to stay by India’s unstable mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). But no sooner does Charlie arrive, people start to disappear, and this has a troubling effect upon India.
One may think that the above discloses too much of the Stoker’s gripping, but strange and purposeless plot. Yet, the above gives away less than the trailer. If anything, like with those for 2012 and The Hobbit I: An Unexpected Journey, Stoker’s trailer portrays the movie’s storyline more succinctly in just under two and a half minutes than the actual film does in 98 minutes. Thus, far from attracting people to see Stoker, the trailer ensures that viewers don’t need to pay to see the movie. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the trailer?
Charlie looking disturbingly interested in his niece as he helps her play the piano.
Worse, Stoker has been promoted as an ‘erotic thriller.’ However, this is misdirection, at best, and misrepresentation, at worst. This is because there’s (sadly) not nearly enough eroticism in the film to justify its selling-point (and this is not just in comparison to steamy erotic thrillers like Eyes Wide Shut and Basic Instinct II). This means that (the promoters have cynically done their job and that) Stoker can only disappoint people who were misled about the nature of the film.
That is not to say that audiences won’t enjoy Stoker’s (few) merits. The music is eerie and unsettling, mirroring Matthew Goode’s unnerving (if narrowly more than one-dimensional) performance. Nicole Kidman is very good, if under-employed, as the unbalanced and irresponsible mother, stuffed with triteness. And Mia Wasikowska plays quite well, too, in a bizarre and paradoxical role as the coming-of-age daughter, without giving viewers any reason to empathise with her character. The rest of the cast, including Jacki Weaver, as aunty Gwendolyn; Phyllis Somerville, as the cook; Lucas Till, as one of the school bullies; and Alden Ehrenreich, as India’s friend, among others, add so little to the plot that they might as well not have bothered agreeing to be part of the project.
India brushing her mother’s hair. Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) almost does not know where she is after waking up in the middle of the night drunk, as usual.
If the oddness of the storyline and performances do not keep audiences on their toes, Stoker’s setting has the ability to keep them guessing as to what era the film is meant to be set in. By deduction, one can work out that the film is meant to be based in 2012. While there might be flat-screen televisions in some of the rooms of the Stoker household, the house itself looks like it is from either (or a mixture of) the 1950s or the early 1990s. Moreover, India might employ a modern hairstyle, but the clothes she wears hint at a 1950s theme, if not earlier. One could argue that this helps to give the movie a more bizarre ambience, which, to a limited extent, it does. Yet, there is a fine balance between doing this and getting it wrong, and in the case of Stoker, it looks as if director Chan-Wook Park could not make up his mind as to what epoch he wanted to set the film in.
Over-all, Stoker is a peculiar blend of weirdness and captivation that had the potential to be so much better. The acting is average and there are numerous flaws and predictabilities in the storyline. Nevertheless, more than anything, the film’s problems are due to its trailer and the advertising campaign that accompanied the movie. Considering how interesting Stoker’s trailer looks, and that the film was billed as an ‘erotic thriller,’ one goes away from the movie feeling let down and that Park missed a great opportunity to make something different and potentially special.
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