| Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: March 1, 2013 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
24
Mixed:
14
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews
Feb 27, 2013
Anyone already planning on seeing Stoker, the English-language film debut of Oldboy and Thirst director Park Chan-wook, shouldn’t read this review. Or watch a trailer. Or read anything about it at all, really...It’s best taken one tense, exhilarating moment at a time, without anticipation or expectation.
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Mar 7, 2013
Stroker slips down the gullet with less fuss, but there are enough blood sprays and snapped vertebrae to pacify the director's clamorous fan club -- and, for the rest of us, plenty of chances to reconsider his style. It is, unquestionably, something to behold. [8 March 2013, p.80]
Feb 28, 2013
The performances are excellent, but it’s the direction that lifts the movie up and spins it around. Like Hitchcock, Park storyboards everything ahead of time, and while that level of control might seem claustrophobic in theory, it ends up freeing Stoker to sail into zones of malevolent visual sensuality.
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Feb 28, 2013
Mar 2, 2013
The movie is less to be experienced than to be appreciatively studied, like an insect, a stuffed bird, or the sketch by a gifted artist in the style of an Old Master — in this case, the Master of Suspense. It’s not pure Park or pure Hitchcock but a muted, mildly mesmerizing blend of the two. You might want to take a careful stroll in this Hitchpark.
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Feb 26, 2013
Park's methodical but tonally uneven direction too often eschews luridness; it's as if he can't decide exactly how far to push his material into the loopy. Still, his assured and evocative camerawork intimates that peril lurks everywhere, and there's an alien quality to its performances and dialogue that suggests a world slightly unhinged.
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Feb 28, 2013
Park is busy treating every frame like a runway model, dressing it up in self-conscious layers of cinematic haute couture. It’s gorgeous to gaze upon but otherwise dessicated – listless, juiceless and ultimately pointless. For all his exemplary camera work, there’s no motion, or emotion, in the picture.
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Feb 25, 2013
Wasikowska drabs herself down. Her body is undefined in dowdy clothes, her hair hangs limply. But her eyes usher you into her inner world, with its battle between girlish longing and the impatience to move on and be what she really is — whatever that might be. It’s a richer performance than the movie deserves.
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Feb 28, 2013
Stoker, which plays something like a remake of “The Addams Family” mixed with “The Paperboy” — but without the laughs of either – belongs in a special category of movie badness, or perhaps two different but overlapping categories. It’s a visually striking but fundamentally terrible film made by a good or (some would say) great director.
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