Nope, no vampires here. “Stoker,” a psychosexual thriller about a mightily dysfunctional family living on a secluded estate, centers on newly 18-year-old India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska), who’s coping with the death of her beloved dad (Dermot Mulroney).
Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director known for his gorgeous depiction of skin-crawling details (most infamously, a man’s ingestion of a live octopus in 2003’s “Oldboy”), brings his signature style to this Gothic saga in his American debut. While there’s no cephalopod-munching, audience squirms are almost guaranteed. And they’re worth it.
As India, Wasikowska — always riveting to watch, even in duds like “Alice in Wonderland” — channels a teenage Wednesday Addams with her lank brown hair, Victorian attire and tendency to glower. One of the opening shots is a close-up of India lancing a foot blister, and her clinical fascination with the tiny erupting boil will mirror her emerging interest in both sadism and her own body.
She’s also nursing a grudging fascination with her visiting Uncle Charlie (a slick Matthew Goode), who shows up at the funeral in shades and a barely suppressed smirk, then moves right in with India and her mom, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). “I want to know my brother’s wife,” he says, more biblically than charitably. He also wants to know his niece, as it turns out.
Park commissioned Philip Glass to compose a piece for one of the more erotic non-sex scenes I’ve seen, in which Charlie intrudes on India’s piano playing for an unexpectedly moving duet.
He also lazily romances Kidman’s oblivious Evelyn, whose morbid-minded daughter has been a lifelong mystery to her (“She doesn’t like to be touched. What a curse!”). The Aussie actress seems to be aging into Joan Crawford-level camp, and in this case it totally works. “I can’t wait to watch life tear you apart!” she screams at India, leaving out the admonition about wire hangers.
But there’s more to Charlie than just low-level incest, and outsiders who get wise to this — like Jacki Weaver as a visiting relative — have a tendency to up and disappear. As the plot hurtles toward its inevitable gory climax, it loses a bit of its zip, as Park’s focus is diverted from his real forte: the little things.
The screenplay, a first-time effort by British actor Wentworth Miller, is surreally fleshed out by the director’s tiny artistic choices, particularly of the aural variety. The creak of a leather belt, the squelch of a blood-soaked pencil tip being sharpened, the crunch of a hard-boiled egg rolled along a tabletop — these set “Stoker” apart from your average murderous incest drama.
Sure, it’s got its horror aspects. But for my money, this movie belongs alongside “Secretary,” “Ginger Snaps” and “Thirteen” in the family of deliciously dark female coming-of-age stories. Near the end, Evelyn poses India a question asked of maybe every teen girl ever: “Who are you?”