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When South Korean genre iconoclast Park Chan-wook decided to bring his peculiar gifts to a Stateside production, anything could have happened – and anything pretty much does in “Stoker,” a splendidly demented gumbo of Hitchcock thriller, American Gothic fairy tale and a contemporary kink all Park’s own. Led by a brilliant Mia Wasikowska as an introverted teenager whose personal and sexual awakening arrives with the unraveling of a macabre family mystery, this exquisitely designed and scored pic will bewilder as many viewers as it bewitches, making ancillary immortality a safer bet than “Black Swan”-style crossover biz for Fox Searchlight’s marvelously mad March hare.

Earmarking future cult items is a fool’s errand, but Park’s film nonetheless stands to be treasured not just by his existing band of devotees, who should recognize enough of the “Oldboy” and “Thirst” director’s loopy eroticism and singular mise-en-scene amid the studio gloss, but by epicurean horror buffs, camp aficionados and even a small, hip sect of post-”Twilight” youths.

Not all those auds will follow the stream of wink-wink storytelling references in the brazenly nasty script by Wentworth Miller, the British-born actor best known for his work in TV’s “Prison Break,” here making his feature writing debut. None is more blatant than the naming of Matthew Goode’s antagonist figure. When morbid-minded honor student India (Wasikowska) loses her beloved father, Richard (Dermot Mulroney), in an apparent freak car accident, the ink is barely dry on the death certificate when her globe-trotting uncle Charles (Goode, his unhurried charm and preppy handsomeness put to their best use since 2005′s “Match Point”), whom she’s never met before, arrives to stay.

Before you can say “Shadow of a Doubt,” this urbanely handsome “Uncle Charlie” is arousing India’s suspicions (and, it’s implied, other things besides) as he swiftly cements himself in the household by seducing her brittle, emotionally susceptible mother, Evelyn (Kidman). Shortly afterward, their housekeeper disappears without notice; ditto India’s meddlesome aunt (a brief but tangy turn from Jacki Weaver), who appears to know troubling truths about the intruder, dismissed out of hand by Evelyn.

The is-he-or-isn’t-he question is answered sooner than Hitch might have done it, as India’s darkest instincts about Charles are confirmed by the end of the first half – though, unsurprisingly in this particular story world, this knowledge actually causes her to warm to him a little. (And only a little: when he mentions he desire to be friends, her typically pithy reply is, “We don’t need to be friends, we’re family.”)

But there’s still plenty of mileage in Miller’s warped family melodrama, as the respective and inevitably linked uncertainties about Richard’s death and Charlie’s long absence are kept aloft, while Charlie’s gradual playing of India and Evelyn against each other adds queasy sexual tension to an already chilly mother-daughter relationship. Auds will either go with this festering hotbed of secrets, lies and severed heads, or tune out early, and even the faithful may debate whether or not Park, who otherwise oversees proceedings with amused precision, overplays his hand in the bizarre, bloody finale.

Material this wild demands actors fully committed to the cause, and Park has found them, particularly in his two female leads. Kidman, here extending her commendable record of counterintuitive auteur collaboration, has such form in the area of passive-aggressive ice queens that her work here shouldn’t surprise, but the performance gets more bravely unhinged as it goes along, culminating in a spectacular Mommie Dearest tirade against her daughter that seems ripe for future impressions. Still, it’s Wasikowska’s film, and she shoulders it with witty aplomb: equal parts Alice in Wonderland and Wednesday Addams, her India is in constant, silent argument with the world around her.

All the actors are given an invaluable assist from Kurt Swanson and Bart Mueller’s crisply tailored costumes, which period-indeterminate even as the film is set in the present day. This kind of chic otherness is also at play in Therese De Prez’s superb production design: the Stoker family house, all angular architectural fittings and inventively distorted scale, is a creation worthy of prime Tim Burton.

Park’s regular d.p. Chung-hoon Chung appears to be channeling photographer Gregory Crewdson’s eerily high-key Americana in his lighting schemes, while Clint Mansell’s characteristically rich, modernist score is embellished with haunting piano duets composed specifically for the film by Philip Glass. The repeated use of the Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra number “Summer Wine,” meanwhile, is typical of the director’s cockeyed take on American culture. Long may he continue to explore.
Camera (color, widescreen), Chung-hoon Chung; editor, Nicolas De Toth; music, Clint Mansell; production designer, Therese De Prez; art director, Wing Lee; set decorator, Leslie Morales; costume designers, Kurt Swanson, Bart Mueller; sound (Dolby, SDDS), Glen Trew; re-recording mixers, Chuck Michael, Jim Bolt; visual effects supervisor, Lee-Jeon Hyoung; visual effects, 4th Creative Party, Reliance Mediaworks; stunt coordinator, Ian Quinn; assistant director, Thomas Fatone; casting, Donna Isaacson. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Premieres), Jan. 20, 2013. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 98 MIN.

Source: http://www.variety.com/

Park Chan-Wook leaves the expected streaks of blood across American screens in Stoker, his English-language debut about a young woman whose coming of age takes place among the corpses of family members and neighbors. Fans who have followed the Korean auteur since 2003′s Oldboy will not be disappointed, but a high creep-out factor and top-drawer cast should attract genre fans who’ve never heard of him as well.

Mia Wasikowska plays India, an unusually serious girl whose father dies on her eighteenth birthday. At the wake she meets an uncle she never knew about, Charlie (Matthew Goode), just returned from unspecified work in Europe; she spends the day dodging his unsettling stare while noting an unsavory familiarity between Charlie and her normally distant mother, Evie (Nicole Kidman).

That unseemliness does not go unnoticed when Charlie decides to stay a while — just the three of them (the longtime housekeeper having left abruptly) in a large house isolated from town by acres of woods. A rarely seen aunt (Jacki Weaver) comes for dinner, hoping to tactfully get Charlie out; she isn’t heard from again.

Park’s restless but exacting camera adds to the tension between these three characters, all of whom are so stiffly guarded with each other — clearly hiding some things but suspiciously open about others — that we spend the first half of the film waiting for something to crack, like the hard-boiled eggshell India slowly demolishes on the kitchen table. Sound cues like that eggshell are often exaggerated here, and much is made of parallel physical actions — the opening of a piano lid, say, whose keyboard will soon witness a disturbingly erotic duet, with that of a deep freeze that holds more than ice cream.

As a connection forms between India and Charlie — a sexually skewed mirror, maybe, of the deep bond she had with her father — Park’s unsettling visuals and his handling of the cast make the occasional holes in Wentworth Miller’s script practically irrelevant. It’s hard to guess whether India is a heroine about to slay a dragon or a beast being born. In the world of Stoker, that seems like a perfect definition of adolescence.

Production Company: Scott Free
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Dermot Mulroney, Jacki Weaver, Nicole Kidman, Phyllis Somerville, Alden Ehrenreich, Lucas Till, Ralph Brown, Judith Godreche
Director: Park Chan-Wook
Screenwriter: Wentworth Miller
Producers: Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Costigan
Executive producers: Steven Rales, Mark Roybal
Director of photography: Chung-Hoon Chung
Production designer: Therese Deprez
Music: Clint Mansell
Costume designers: Kurt Swanson, Bart Mueller
Editor: Nicolas De Toth
Rated R, 98 minutes

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/

As is usually the case, this year’s lineup for the Sundance Film Festival packs in a variety of highly anticipated premieres. From the American debut of Hogwarts’ most famous wizard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s first feature film as a writer/director to what looks like one badass rock doc, Sundance 2013 is sure to have us buzzing in the subfreezing temperatures.

Even if you can’t make it out to Park City, Utah, this year, these are the films you’ll need to keep an eye out for down the road when they make their way to a theater near you. These are our must-see movies of Sundance 2013:

“Stoker”
Chan-wook Park has been a legend of the South Korean film scene for over a decade, and he will finally make his English-language debut with the trippy gothic thriller “Stoker.” Written by Wentworth Miller, this creepy story tells the tale of a teenage girl (Mia Wasikowska), her deranged mother (Nicole Kidman) and her mysterious uncle (Matthew Goode).

Source: http://www.mtv.com/

Case in point, check out this exclusive one-sheet poster for the film that features an unusual holiday-esque portrait warning “DO NOT DISTURB THE FAMILY” with a blood splattered twist.

Kidman (as mother Evelyn) shoots eye daggers big enough to kill, Wasikowska (as daughter India) holds a sharply pointed pencil in her bloody hands, and Matthew Goode (as handsome uncle Charlie, who appears out of the blue after India’s father dies, and becomes the object of both Evelyn and India’s obsessive affections) stands to the side with an intense stare. Written by Wentworth Miller and co-produced by Ridley Scott, the late Tony Scott, and Michael Costigan, Stoker is the first English language film helmed by South Korean director Park, a master at emotional murder mystery with a stylized edge.

Stoker is out in theaters March 1.
Source: http://insidemovies.ew.com/

Silver will now be credited as an exec producer on “Loft” along with Andrew Rona and Steve Richards.

In addition, Dark Castle is in production on “Getaway,” a thriller starring Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez. Details on that project were not immediately available.

Dark Castle is currently working with Emmett/Furla Films on Albert Hughes’ actioner “Motor City,” which has Gerard Butler attached to star, though Gary Oldman and Amber Heard are no longer involved with the project.

As for “Loft,” the Erik Van Looy-directed pic is an English-language remake of his own 2008 Belgian film. Edgy indie follows five married friends who share a loft where each brings his mistress. When the dead body of an unknown woman is found there, they begin to suspect one another of murder.

Wentworth Miller, James Marsden, Karl Urban, Eric Stonestreet and Matthias Schoenaerts star alongside Rhona Mitra, Isabel Lucas, Rachael Taylor, Margarita Levieva and Kristin Lehman.

Wesley Strick (“Doom”) adapted Bart De Pauw’s original screenplay. Anonymous Content’s Steve Golin, Paul Green, Matt DeRoss and Adam Shulman produced along with original “Loft” producer Hilde DeLaere of Woestijnvis.

Source: http://www.variety.com/