Stoker

Total Film by

Park Chan-wook brings operatic finesse to generic material in his tight-wound, wickedly weird US debut. And Mia Wasikowska nails it.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

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.

Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez

The film's weird mix of dollhouse dread and fashion-magazine chic can be fetching, but it's nothing if not vacuous, a series of disjointed, improvisatory riffs that recall the brazen aesthetic overload of Amer.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

More blatantly an exercise in style than anything on par with the director's crowning achievements, and suffers to some degree from the predictability of its premise.

The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore

Park's unsettling visuals and his handling of the cast make the occasional holes in Wentworth Miller's script practically irrelevant.

Empire by Olly Richards

An intense mix of horror, thriller and domestic drama, this is exquisite film making.

The Playlist by Rodrigo Perez

The risible Stoker is a brutally empty, deeply unfortunate movie, and Park Chan-wook's jackhammer of a tool he calls a brush is, on this evidence, something that should be locked away.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore

The Hollywood debut of Korean filmmaker Chan-Wook Park (“Oldboy”) is a vivid, short exercise in tone, a movie lacking shocks and huge surprises, but one that makes up for that by creeping us out, from start to finish.