Thankfully, this director dislikes sentimentality. Park takes these beloved figures and unceremoniously exposes their failings.

| Jan 15, 2021

There is a freedom to his filmmaking; he's trying things, odd moods and unexpected edits and unconventional compositions. He likes to keep things popping, and you can't help but respond to the wit and playfulness of his style.

| Jun 21, 2016

It's too safe, too knotty, too wastefully handsome, too dull.

| Jan 3, 2014

Stoker trembles between the portentous and the ridiculous, and I think you know which one is going to win. The audience does make its decision: They've been had yet again.

| Jun 12, 2013

While one is sure Stoker will satisfy many with its haughty ambivalence about any number of social taboos, others will find Park's first English-language effort decidedly vapid...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 10, 2013

Style doesn't just win out here, it smashes substance like a bug under a shoe.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5.0 | Apr 24, 2013

Stoker, rather improbably, manages to find the handshake place between predictable and confounding. And that's... an achievement?

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 22, 2013

Works mostly as a mood piece, but what a mood it is.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 21, 2013

Stoker is a cunning exercise in transgression. But one can't help but wonder what kind of film Park might have made if he'd had the full creative control to which he's accustomed in Korea.

| Mar 15, 2013

None of it is life-changing, but it is effectively eerie. Stylishly spooky, even.

| Original Score: B | Mar 15, 2013

"Stoker" plays out like a Kabuki "Macbeth": gallons of style slathered on a story you already know by heart.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 15, 2013

"Stoker" is a thriller in which the big question is not "What will happen next?" but rather "What is going on?"

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 14, 2013

[It] seems to be unfolding somewhere else; somewhere where it makes sense that everyone seems to be sleepwalking.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 14, 2013

Aesthetics are steering this ghostly ship, leaving narrative in the background to fend for itself. Fortunately, Park is in full command of his repertoire.

| Original Score: B | Mar 14, 2013

Even though Park creates and sustains a mood, and shows what an athlete he is with the camera, the actors are struggling valiantly to give some emotional texture to a story that, ultimately, defeats itself.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 14, 2013

If the destination isn't what it might have been, the journey is a heck of a ride.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 14, 2013

A beautifully twisted, slow-burning psychothriller that may or may not all be taking place inside India's head, Stoker marks South Korean cult director Chan-wook Park's inaugural English language venture.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 14, 2013

Like a taxidermied owl, "Stoker" is lovely to look at, but in the end it's hard to give a hoot.

| Mar 13, 2013

At first, Stoker resembles a twisted variation on Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 thriller Shadow of a Doubt, with Matthew Goode in the role of Uncle Charlie, created so memorably by Joseph Cotten.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2013

A strange hybrid, which dips into spurty horror and Lynchian parody, with added sexual awakening and shoe fetishism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2013