Premise: After the death of her father, a teenage girl because curious about the mysterious and possibly dangerous uncle that moves in with her and her mother.
Park Chan-wook rules. I've seen Oldboy, which lived up to the hype and I've seen The Handmaiden which I adore. As I get deeper into Korean cinema, it's his work I'm most excited for, not Bong Joon-Ho's. The idea of an American movie directed by him and starring Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman among others is something I was excited to see. Stoker has been one of those movie's that's been next on my list for a half dozen years now. I'm not sure why it kept getting picked over, but I was thrilled when it was Stoker's turn in my Netflix DVD queue.
Sadly, I wasn't that satisfied with the movie as I'd hoped. It's visually striking. Wasikowska gives a wonderful weirdo performance. Chan-Wook is great at making it eerie throughout. It was a lot more style than substance though. The story isn't that inventive. It's pretty much the story it seems like it's going to be 10 minutes in, except with a few extra kinks. I don't know what Park Chan-Wook's mastery of the English language is, but this sure plays like a movie where the director was more concerned with how things are said than what is said. All the words could've been replaced by Charlie Brown teacher voices and it would've had the same effect. I'm afraid I don't really get the point of it all either. I guess Wasikowska just had a killer in her the whole time?...Ok, sure.
Not exactly a bad movie. It tempers my excitement of anything else Chan-Wook may do in English, but it does nothing to hurt my desire to track down more of his Korean stuff.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment