Park Chan-wook goes to Hollywood. "Stoker"

There's something that scares more than a horror movie, the sensation of the spectator who goes to the theatre with the feeling that the film won't scare him/her, even thrill. That's true. There are few movies nowadays that really scare or thrill. Maybe are we, the spectators, who have changed and we didn't notice it.

So, if a horror movie doesn't scare us, what we can expect about it? To get our attention, to keep us alert about the action and to not bored us, at least that thrill us. This four qualities is what Stoker has. Maybe doesn't scare, but it isn't a horror movie as we known.

We can be mistaken for the name of the film that makes us think about vampires. But it really isn't in a strict sense. Stoker tells a story about a mother and her daughter, India. Their husband/father died. And in the funeral his brother appears to stay with for a while. But he is misterious. He've never been with them before, but he catch the attention of the mother and the hate/attraction of India. He do it as a real vampire, not the one who is feed with blood, but the one who is capable to seduce people and make they do what he wants.

There's not really really new in the plot, and the director, Park Chan-wook knows it. So he starts the movie from the end and he emphasized all putting the attention in other aspects. India, the main character, has one gift: she can listen small sounds. So one of the attractions of the movie is how the spectator listen everything by the ears of India, really loud, very clear. This is something new, we don't see the story through main character's eyes but through her ears. We can hear every detail and catch our attention.

Another interesting aspect of the film is the Park Chan-wook vision. Some shots are not kinematics, I mean photos in movement, are more "kinegraphies", stopped images (kind of .gif) where only one part is with movement. The part who get the attention of India's ears. Is something shocking, weird at the beginning but who helps to impact the audience, and confuse them, as the strange man does.

The whole movie, in fact, it's amazing thanks to the author stamp. The south-korean director really knows that there's nothing new in the plot, it's a Hollywood movie!!! So he create an atmosphere, a sensation with the shots, with images that impact in the spectator without violence at all but full of thrill. The spectator haa the sensation in every single shot that something is going on and going to happen, and the director change the shot to another one, and do the same.


Some critics say that Hollywood erase the Park Chan-wook stamp. This violence of Oldboy, his most popular movie around the world, the deep meaning... In this aspect I can say they are right, but he is still talking about the malice. The evil that is present from the beginning and in every shot, the evil that spectators can feel in their seats, in their bodies with this eye-catching (ear-catching) and beautiful images that only the authors can film. An evil that is real, is not a phantom, is not a spirit, is a human evil, this one that really scares and thrills us, like Stoker, a movie that make us feel that humans are the origin of the evil. And when we feel this sensation we can say that this one is a real horror movie. A Hollywood and a Park Chan-wook's movie. What else we can ask to a movie?

Trailer:

"Kinegraphies" examples: