MOVIE REVIEW
Nothing succeeds like failure
A pair of new releases that don't live up to their stellar billings
- Published: 1 Mar 2013 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: Life
Stoker is a lurid thriller that imagines itself, and struggles laboriously to be, something else. Come on, where's the blood? Where's the viscerality, the Hitchcockian glee, the good-old perversity? That late arrival of gore _ and such aestheticised gore, sprayed like expensive jets of perfume over dainty flowers _ almost seems disingenuous given the pedigree of the genre and the director, Park Chan-wook of Oldboy fame.
Stoker
Starring Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode. Directed by Park Chan-wook.
Not that I'm demanding violence: simpler, I just thought Stoker would take itself less seriously. I thought it wouldn't have tried with all its might to achieve that arthouse stuck-upness because it isn't and should never be.
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