Stok­er

With its evoca­tive title and quirky goth­ic hor­ror tone, the first Eng­lish-lan­guage film from Kore­an mas­ter Park Chan-wook reads like an obvi­ous com­pan­ion piece to the director’s 2009 vam­pire para­ble Thirst.

The only mon­sters here, how­ev­er, are unmis­tak­ably and unam­bigu­ous­ly human. And yet despite this, Stoker’s blood runs cold. The unfor­tu­nate con­se­quence of an unde­ni­ably beau­ti­ful but weird­ly hol­low por­trait of erod­ing fam­i­ly values.

After the untime­ly death of her father Richard (Der­mot Mul­roney), just-18 Wednes­day Addams clone India Stok­er (Mia Wasikows­ka) is sad­dled with a numb­ing sense of aban­don­ment. Not only has she lost her dear­est pop but her best friend, the one per­son who tru­ly under­stood her.

India’s grief-strick­en moth­er Evie (Nicole Kid­man) clear­ly isn’t cut out for sin­gle-par­ent­hood – her mater­nal inad­e­qua­cy summed up in the line, ​“Per­son­al­ly speak­ing, I can’t wait to watch life tear you apart.” So it’s to both women’s relief when long-lost Uncle Char­lie (Matthew Goode) shows up out of the blue offer­ing solace.

So far so Shad­ow Of A Doubt. Regret­tably, how­ev­er, that’s where the com­par­isons with Hitchcock’s superla­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller end.

Before Char­lie takes up tem­po­rary res­i­dence at the leafy fam­i­ly estate, from the moment India first notices him star­ing intent­ly at her through the trees at his brother’s funer­al, we sense there’s a hid­den agen­da to his sud­den arrival. His inten­tions are sign­post­ed so ear­ly on, in fact, that we’re braced for the mask to slip before he’s even for­mal­ly intro­duced as the urbane, enig­mat­ic branch of the Stok­er fam­i­ly tree.

Genre hounds will lap up the lit­er­ary ref­er­ences, macabre sym­bol­ism and occa­sion­al spat­ter of claret, not to men­tion the rich cin­e­matog­ra­phy pro­vid­ed by reg­u­lar Chan­wook col­lab­o­ra­tor Chung Chung-hoon.

But no amount of style can com­pen­sate the ter­mi­nal lack of sense in Prison Break actor Went­worth Miller’s debut script. The whole thing plays out like a Stephe­nie Mey­er penned episode of Mid­somer Mur­ders in which each character’s dra­mat­ic arc is off­set by irra­tional actions and illog­i­cal judgements.

The film’s part­ing sin: a long reveal-all flash­back that damp­ens any lin­ger­ing glim­mer of intrigue and leaves very lit­tle to savour on repeat viewings.