Stoker
The silliest, murder-iest coming-of-age story since... I don't know, Dirty Dancing (if Dirty Dancing had been full of murdering), Stoker is the English-language debut from Park Chan-wook. Park's the South Korean director behind Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. The great thing about the Vengeance Trilogy is how involving all of them are; despite their shocks and despite Park's showoffy stylistic flourishes, they're genuinely engaging stories. Maybe that's why Stoker feels so broken: It boasts a lot of that same luridness, but it's so tonally uneven that one's unable to tell what, if anything, the film's trying to do.
by Erik Henriksen