Saturday 17 August 2013

Stoker (2013) vs. The Stepfather (1987)

From http://itsblogginevil.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/stepfather871.jpg

From http://zombiehamster.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/STOKER-4.jpeg

Dir. Park-Chan Wook/Joseph Ruben

So many coincidences take place in life that surely it happens in your film viewing too. I finally caught up with Park-Chan Wook's American debut one night, then the next night I saw the cult horror film The Stepfather. In the first, after the death of the father, the unknown uncle (Matthew Goode) enters the remaining family only to reveal a sinister side of him that startles the daughter (Mia Wasikowska), a girl who herself has a potential dark side. In the later, the daughter (Jill Schoelen) suspects that her stepfather (Terry O'Quinn) is more than he says he is, obsessed with having the perfect family. Unlike Stoker, it's made upfront that there's some psychopathic behaviour being thrown about in the first few minutes. One high prestige film from a South Korean alumni, one love budget Canadian film. It's amazing Stoker can be traced back to the later...and that its completely pretentious and barely watchable in comparison. Neither is good, but at least The Stepfather has a lack of strained artistry.


Both films involve a revelation taking place for the young, female protagonist near the ice cream freezer in the cellar. Both involve the sexualisation of them in the shower. In The Stepfather its brief nudity that could be either an establishing shot or an abrupt moments of titillation in a film that is only adult in its occasional gore. In Stoker it's a scene linking sex, death, and death fantasies through masturbation that, depicted with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, made me want to punch Park-Chan Wook and scriptwriter Wentworth Miller. Both replications perfectly describe the films together. The Stepfather is lurid genre cinema that yet is completely relaxed and comfortable with what it is. Stoker protracts these moments found in other genre films like The Stepfather, and strains so badly to be "high art". Both depict a conventional nuclear family - mother, daughter, a new father figure - after the passing the original father and being replaced by a surrogate who is an invading parasite of masculine and patriarchal ideals. In The Stepfather, the desire for the peaceful, quaint happy families of magazines and fifties America. In Stoker, mental and psychological disconnect and sociopathic desires. In Stoker, there is nothing profound in its dialogue to support its excessive stylisation, hollow and without tension, and without any gravitas. The Stepfather is a generic horror film, but it has so no sense of pretention whatsoever.

From http://s.mcstatic.com/thumb/7613400/20760803/4/flash_player/
0/1/the_stepfather_1987_attacking_stephanie_part_2.jpg?v=4

From http://thatfilmguy.net/Pics/Stoker.jpg

To The Stepfather's advantage, it has charm. While with a type of recluse anti-social young adult character who exists in reality, Wasikowska is completely unlikable and uninteresting. Completely overdone in being anti-social, and because of the complete lack of good characterisation,  she's also completely vacuous. The depiction of her growing dark side just emphasises an uncomfortable and childish fetish for violence, that shower sequence representing its nadir. It also causes me to worry about rewatching some of the Park-Chan Wook's earlier films, especially Oldboy (2004) and how violent and twisted in its plot it gets. With Schoelen in The Stepfather, you get a character, while one dimensional, who is charming, likely because the real actress was off-set. It's a generic character, but she's allowed to smile, isn't stuck in an overwrought, unoriginal take on Expressionist set design or with violence taking place every minute around her. Her mother is charming despite her one note nature too and has more interaction with her daughter. Nicole Kidman in Stoker shows what happens when a Hollywood actress feels their prescience is enough when it doesn't, making me wish all her films were like Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003) where she was forced to actually act. In the surrogates, O'Quinn is far more interesting than Goode. O'Quinn could be seen as hammy, but his character's obsession could have made a fascinating black comedy around how he acts the role out. Goode comes off as a bad version of what Casey Affleck does so well in films like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), an uncomfortably confident, quiet male who has the potential to be charming but is liable to snap as well. Even if I hated The Killer Inside Me (2010), Michael Winterbottom's controversial novel adaptation, Affleck did this type of role properly with real emphasis. And unlike Stoker, in The Stepfather the boys in the protagonist's school are not all potential rapists the moment you are alone with them. While I'm not a fan of a lot of eighties horror films, there was some sort of attempt in many at likable teenagers. It was only generic storytelling that failed them, not the actual characterisations.

Ultimately the coincidences prove an unfortunate truth that some films are completely identical to dismissed b-movies, and that they can be far worse and lifeless than said b-movies. I wasn't that fond of The Stepfather, but it has more virtues. It knew what it was, and had charm for that reason. The protagonist had some charisma, and a subplot involving her psychiatrist/councillor invokes a brief but tantalising moment when he gets to examine her stepfather's mind. And while I've forgotten Stoker's score, baffling consideration it was composed by Clint Mansell, the score in it is the cheesy synths that I've developed an un-guilty love for. Stoker becomes the poor man's b-movie in that it tries to think its above one but doesn't have the material to judge itself even next to one. Prolonged gore with no weight and a po-faced darkness. The casual lack of seriousness to The Stepfather turns out to be the more artistically mature attitude to making a film because it's a b-movie that knows it's one and just tries to entertain.

From http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4050/4583515050_68f8892046_z.jpg

From http://www.moviefancentral.com/images/pictures/review29390/matthewgoode-nicolekidman-miawasikowska-STOKER.jpg?1367185181

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