A girl’s guide to hunting and killing

It’s been scientifically proven that remaking Alfred Hitchcock always leads to disaster. But using one of Hitch’s favorite films as the springboard for an original and disturbing coming-of-age tale is almost, well, Hitchcockian.

Stoker is directed by Park Chan-wook, the attention-getting Korean director who made the notorious Oldboy. On display in Stoker are some of Chan-wook’s trademarks: unusual frame compositions, well-deployed details, saturated colors, and a palpable sense of dread. Also on display is Mia Wasikowska as India: she’s 18, her dad (Dermot Mulroney) has recently died in a car accident, and she has a chilly relationship with her mom, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman, looking brittle and beautiful, like a weary china doll).

Arriving on their doorstep is Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), a suave, seductive bon vivant who neither India nor Evelyn has really met before (he’s been away in Europe, according to India’s parents). He proceeds to charm Evelyn (side-by-side piano lessons, French conversation, glasses of red wine) and tries to chip away at India’s icy demeanor.

But India’s different, you see. She “focuses on things” that others don’t notice, like a daddy longlegs creeping up her stocking, or a pattern on the inside of a vase in art class. Her strange indifference to people and convention makes her an outcast; her mom notes that she “never liked to be touched” as a child. About the only family bonding she did in life was during hunting trips with her dad.

She also likes taxidermy, stuffing some of the animals she’s shot, another reference to Hitchcock (Norman’s pet hobby in Psycho). But all in all she just seems like a regular broody teen, troubled by angst and her father’s sudden death.

Uncle Charlie is, of course, a direct nod to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, that 1943 Thornton Wilder-penned precursor to Blue Velvet and numerous serial killer flicks: like Joseph Cotton’s Charlie, Goode is smooth and amoral, capable of charming the widows he wishes to throttle. Unlike Shadow of a Doubt, India is her own creation, not a mere mirror image of evil Uncle Charlie (the niece played by Teresa Wright was also named Charlie; the uncle and niece shared an almost psychic bond). It’s from this noir classic that screenwriter Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) has mined a story that branches from the original into interesting new twists; indeed, empowering the niece seems to be the point of Stoker.

Despite the title, there are no fanged creatures about; we’ve seen enough modern vampire fodder already to last an undead century by now. What’s better is Miller’s focus on the Stoker family dynamic: the back story of three brothers, the icy reserve between Kidman and Wasikowska as they quietly pad about their Gothic home. The outside world barely intrudes on this fractured dollhouse, except for the occasional sheriff, or suspiciously snooping aunt, or, of course, Uncle Charlie.

What’s at stake is India’s soul as she reaches young womanhood: a remarkable scene shows Uncle Charlie offering her a gateway to adulthood in the form of Louis Vuitton high heels, to replace her childish black and white flats.

What director Chan-wook brings to the show is a creepy mood that constantly throws you off, preventing you from comfortably settling into its hypnotic gothic charm. His camera angles are jarring, unexpected; his framing unconventional. His way with room settings (remember Oldboy?) amounts to a style all its own. This may or may not be his big Hollywood breakthrough — Stoker is far too unsettling to be a huge box office hit — but it shows he’s capable of speaking the language of Hollywood. As he’s said, he likes “telling big stories through small, artificially created worlds.”

There’s the array of India’s shoes, for instance, from infant to teenager, all laid out in separate boxes and surrounding India as she’s curled up in bed. There’s that huge garden with its large concrete spheres, rolled about at various points in the story. (A funny detail is the auntie’s missing cell phone, which India tries to summon from its burial site by dialing its number from her own phone.) There’s the Bates-like motel in one scene, and the swinging basement lights à la Psycho. There’s the recurring motif of both India and Charlie borrowing her dad’s leather belts.

Kidman gives a creepy yet ultimately sympathetic turn as an icy mom who we come to realize has nothing on the frigid temperatures of her own daughter. Goode is an icily effective seducer who knows how to cook, speak French and apparently possesses a green thumb. Like another sociable sociopath in fiction, Tom Ripley, Charlie’s chameleon-like charm masks a lethal sangfroid. And Wasikowska is solid as a young lady at the crossroads of quirky and dangerously crazy. 

But what holds it together is Chan-wook’s assurance — his dreamlike yet clear-eyed visual sense makes this more than a mere Hitchcock knockoff. There’s a savage attention to detail in every shot, much like India’s meticulous frame of mind. Stoker clings to you like southern gothic moss.