Foreign directors from certain parts of the world rarely make a smooth transition to Hollywood. European directors and writers of course have on the whole done very well, embedding themselves in the very DNA of Hollywood (especially those fleeing WWII Europe). This is for some reason a more difficult transition for Asian directors, whether East Asian (Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand etc.) or South Asia (India, Malaysia etc.).
This is why when I saw that HBO had a South Korean director’s Hollywood debut, I jumped on the chance to see Park Chan-wook’s Stoker - I liked “Oldboy” (2003), although I didn’t think it was as much of a masterpiece as the common reputation is.
Well, Stoker is a complete strikeout - and furthermore I have zero hope of any decent Hollywood work from Park Chan-wook, based on this film. The reason is simple - he appears not to understand the cultural language of the West.
—————SPOILER ALERT———————
To beging with, the choice of the script is very disappointing - the script is miscalculated. It’s supposed to be Hitchcockian, but misses badly with the protagonist - we’re supposed to feel for the main character, but it has a really bad “twist” toward the end that leaves us cold.
The casting is meh, with Mia Wasikowski not really up to the role, but I can’t put too much blame here, because it would take a very strong actress for this role, and I can’t think of any in that age bracket who would be fully up to the task… which is another reason this script should have been a pass - it asks too much of the main actress.
The biggest problem is really consistent miscalculation of effects. There is non-stop drumming up of tension/effects which consistently deliver nothing as resolution. Sound effects, camera movement, music, acting - very very portentious - telling us “WATCH NOW, SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN”… and nothing happens. This results in complete disengagement for the audience and also in very poor pacing as we’re now always anticipating “ok, ok, enough with those slow movements, we already know nothing’s behing that corner - GET ON WITH IT, IT’S SLOOOOW!!!”. It just doesn’t deliver.
It’s funny for me as I play a kind of game, watching movies - I have noticed it’s extremely similar to reading scripts. You can tell within less than a page if the script is any good, often from the first paragraph. Book editors apparently too have such a rule, where they can tell if a manuscript is worth anything at all, within the first eight lines.
I have now expanded this to movies. I can tell, 99% of the time if a film is worth anything within the first two minutes. And there’s a corolary for me - if the music is conspicuously bad, the film is likely to be bad too, and so it can take as little as 15 seconds of a film for me to spot the disaster. Now, for the music there may be exceptions - there are some directors who are decent, yet don’t have an ear for music period - Soderbergh, Scorsese. If they hire good music directors, they can get lucky, if not, well, despite the poor music they can still pull it off. But for the vast majority of directors the rule holds - if you can’t tell what’s good music and you can’t hire a good music director, you’ll likely have also poor taste and artistic judgment in everything else, which means - bad film.
And it holds for Stoker - I had a very bad feeling with the opening VO… it went on, and on, and on, and half the time you couldn’t clearly hear or absorb what was being said. Right then and there it told me - this director doesn’t understand effects, he can’t tell how long is too long to have a VO of this particular engagement level. This means he is likely just bad at understanding engagement and how much dramatic content a scene needs to sustain in order to work for the audience. This is incurable. Maybe he has a better grasp of Korean audiences, but for American/Western audiences this strikes out. He’s doomed over here - better stick to South Korea. All IMHO, YMMV.
This is why when I saw that HBO had a South Korean director’s Hollywood debut, I jumped on the chance to see Park Chan-wook’s Stoker - I liked “Oldboy” (2003), although I didn’t think it was as much of a masterpiece as the common reputation is.
Well, Stoker is a complete strikeout - and furthermore I have zero hope of any decent Hollywood work from Park Chan-wook, based on this film. The reason is simple - he appears not to understand the cultural language of the West.
—————SPOILER ALERT———————
To beging with, the choice of the script is very disappointing - the script is miscalculated. It’s supposed to be Hitchcockian, but misses badly with the protagonist - we’re supposed to feel for the main character, but it has a really bad “twist” toward the end that leaves us cold.
The casting is meh, with Mia Wasikowski not really up to the role, but I can’t put too much blame here, because it would take a very strong actress for this role, and I can’t think of any in that age bracket who would be fully up to the task… which is another reason this script should have been a pass - it asks too much of the main actress.
The biggest problem is really consistent miscalculation of effects. There is non-stop drumming up of tension/effects which consistently deliver nothing as resolution. Sound effects, camera movement, music, acting - very very portentious - telling us “WATCH NOW, SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN”… and nothing happens. This results in complete disengagement for the audience and also in very poor pacing as we’re now always anticipating “ok, ok, enough with those slow movements, we already know nothing’s behing that corner - GET ON WITH IT, IT’S SLOOOOW!!!”. It just doesn’t deliver.
It’s funny for me as I play a kind of game, watching movies - I have noticed it’s extremely similar to reading scripts. You can tell within less than a page if the script is any good, often from the first paragraph. Book editors apparently too have such a rule, where they can tell if a manuscript is worth anything at all, within the first eight lines.
I have now expanded this to movies. I can tell, 99% of the time if a film is worth anything within the first two minutes. And there’s a corolary for me - if the music is conspicuously bad, the film is likely to be bad too, and so it can take as little as 15 seconds of a film for me to spot the disaster. Now, for the music there may be exceptions - there are some directors who are decent, yet don’t have an ear for music period - Soderbergh, Scorsese. If they hire good music directors, they can get lucky, if not, well, despite the poor music they can still pull it off. But for the vast majority of directors the rule holds - if you can’t tell what’s good music and you can’t hire a good music director, you’ll likely have also poor taste and artistic judgment in everything else, which means - bad film.
And it holds for Stoker - I had a very bad feeling with the opening VO… it went on, and on, and on, and half the time you couldn’t clearly hear or absorb what was being said. Right then and there it told me - this director doesn’t understand effects, he can’t tell how long is too long to have a VO of this particular engagement level. This means he is likely just bad at understanding engagement and how much dramatic content a scene needs to sustain in order to work for the audience. This is incurable. Maybe he has a better grasp of Korean audiences, but for American/Western audiences this strikes out. He’s doomed over here - better stick to South Korea. All IMHO, YMMV.