Stoker is a masterful psychodrama that teems with unsettling vibrations that hark directly back to Alfred Hitchcock, but also to the wave of contemporary cinema that has been surging in South Korea for the past decade. It is the first American feature by the auteur Park Chan-wook, whose widely seen trilogy of "revenge" films, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance, paved the way for the meticulous craftsmanship of Stoker. The inspiration for Wentworth Miller's haunting script was Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, though Stoker makes for an altogether creepier tale of a mysterious uncle, his melancholy niece, and the deadly interplay of family secrets slowly revealed. Park's delicate weaving of style transforms the material into a narrative symphony, with thematic elements conveyed in the smallest details of composition, art direction, and graceful cinematography. Mia Wasikowska is India Stoker, the teenage niece who just lost her father to a violent auto accident. It's a complete surprise to India and her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) when his handsome younger brother Charlie (Matthew Goode) shows up at the brooding family mansion (itself a character that is integral to the story). Charlie's enigmatic smirk signals both calm and danger, and his presence is a catalyst that ratchets up the emotional turmoil India and Evelyn are already experiencing. India senses the danger even as she is drawn to Charlie, and her mother's repressed sexuality turns into a bonfire under his mysterious charm. He tempts and teases them both in an expertly choreographed dance of menace that fuels the rage building in India and puts further pressure on her mother's cataclysmic despair. Charlie's psychopathic presence infests the brooding, yet deceptively airy surroundings of the Stoker estate with a sense of peril that is just out of reach. Several key scenes unfold at the family dinner table, where poison lurks in Freudian undercurrents and maybe in the food and wine, too. The most mesmerising sequence captures a visit from the sheriff, who's investigating the murder of one of India's schoolmates. The crime is just one of many acts of deadly violence that erupt with jarring force in the past, present, and future of Stoker's disturbing timeline. As the sheriff talks to India and Charlie, the camera swirls around to the rhythm of the scene, separating, uniting, then retreating from them in a virtuosic room-to-room sweep. The extended take says much more about the interplay of India and Charlie's dread connection than the oblique dialogue. It's also a breathtaking illustration of Park's obsessive attention to shot design. But Stoker is much more than an exercise in style; it is also an unnerving and understated thriller that gives big rewards for all that attention to detail. To say that there are plot twists is an understatement for a movie whose elegant creativity is the biggest twist of all. --Ted Fry