The Family Porno: Stoker, Reviewed

If there's one thing I'm learning not to trust about movies, it's my own expectations. Hopes bite in the dark. Like Prometheus, which wasn't worth the effort I made to keep myself spoiler-free. Nor the cost of the ticket. Or even the TTC token I'm pretty sure I dropped in the theatre. 

More recently, Stoker let me down. The trailer had me all excited - Hitchcock crosses the Mason-Dixon line! - but the result was a hot mess, country-style. The plot is not unlike Shadow of a Doubt, though Mia Wasikowska's India Stoker is a far more sinister protagonist than Teresa Wright's Young Charlie. Still, they are both threatened by an Uncle Charlie. And though the solutions to their family difficulties are wildly different, their actions bring them both into their sexual maturity. Of course, this is less direct if we go back to the Hitchcock. Somewhat less shower masturbation, if I remember correctly. Because it's Park Chan-wook, there's sex. And in Stoker it teeters instead of balancing on the knife's edge of incest. However, it's not the sex which makes Stoker so silly. Needing to be either less or more stylized, to revel in its deep-fried absurdity or tone it down a little, what's on screen just looks awkward. You admire its ambitions. Even as you giggle at their results.