Horror Actressing: Mia Wasikowska in "Stoker"
Monday, September 14, 2020 at 4:40PM 
Out this Friday the cast of Antonio Campos' new Netflix film The Devil All the Time is so ridiculously stacked with young actors of note -- Tom Holland! Robert Pattinson! Riley Keough! -- that it was inevitable one of them would be left under-served by the material, and I'm sad to report the worst off in this respect is by my estimation the best actor in the whole cast, one Mia Wasikowska. She gets less than five minutes of screen-time, none of which save her final moments give her much of anything to do, all while we know good and well dagnabit that Miss Mia can do anything!
So for today's edition of our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series let's look back at Mia doing something. Something plenty worthy of her talents. In Park Chan-wook's deliriously under-appreciated 2013 coming-of-age thriller Stoker, specifically.
Mia plays India, who's celebrating her 18th birthday as the film opens... The celebration turns out to be short-lived however, as her birthday candles are lit and immediately extinguished as the news of India's father's death hits the house (and post-Parasite I'll admit I couldn't help but be reminded of another bad birthday party cake experience coming from a favorite South Korean director). Her coming-of-age turns wake; her coming-out dress a mod Victorian mourning sheath. Vitality, in Stoker's world, always has a price, a drain that takes its toll -- we're all a stone's roll away from dirt babies, sand-houses tumbling down around us.
Sharp echoes of Park's 2009 bloodsucker flick Thirst play especially pronounced here, as India repeatedly reads as vampiric -- like that earlier film's character of Tae-ju (a tremendous turn from actress Ok-bin Kim which we will surely get to for this series at some point) India finds eroticism and teeth-chattering excitement from danger and violence, far too much for all the half-assed men in her life. Her school-boy bullies get pencils and leather belts and garden shears and finally telescoped high-powered rifles as payback for their incessant pestering, sniffing around.
India briefly finds common ground with her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), whose name is a nice shout-out to Hitchcock's small-town perversion Shadow of a Doubt but who goes to places that would have had even Hitch blushing -- their scene co-stomping Phillip Glass into the home piano, a symphony of thigh swells and finger stabs, is a page-turner, overheated for both India and we the audience, maturing her up and well past her uncle without him or us even realizing. Before, natch, it's too late for us all. She's got places to be and wallpaper-matched brains to splatter.
Wasikowska's cat-eyed curiosity reads at times like the now-overplayed head tilt of Halloween killer Michael Myers, clinically taking in the disaster he's just wrought on a human body -- it's not clear at first how aware she is of her possibilites for inner and outer violence; of what it means when pressed out there into the world.
But Mia & Park quick leave such hackneyed villain notions in the dust, back with the simple crazed Uncle Charlies with motivations so basic, so dull -- India's burgeoning womanhood and self-actualization is too big for the ol' playground boys. She's too complicated, clock-precise, gear snap into gear a billion clicks ahead of their lizard brains. Like a spider up a thigh and high across a ruined face India, proud adult person India, survives and thrives in the world she's been handed. Queen of the freeway, blood on the reeds.
Reader Comments (12)
This movie is all about Nicole for me but Mia is great and super underrated in general.
I adore this film - its gorgeous look, Wentworth Miller's script, the music, and it's wonderfully cast (not only Mia W., Goode, and Kidman, but beyond that, including Weaver, Somerville, and Ehrenreich). Wasikowska is very good here (although I'm with Bradley in reallllly being into Kidman) in a tricky role. Between this and Piercing I'm thinking I may like her best in mysterious and kind of twisted roles.
Mia fucking killed it in this movie and I love every second she was in that film.
ScottC -- I considered writing up Piercing for this post instead, as I think she's amazing in that too, but I had very much been wanting to re-watch Stoker so this gave me a good excuse! Agreed that Mia's at her best playing a little bit of a weirdo -- that fits with Jane Eyre too, honestly. And the Cronenberg movie.
...and her Hiddleston collabs Crimson Peak and Only Lovers Left Alive (though some might disagree about the latter).
This is such an incredible film that unfairly got overlooked in 2013 as being one of the best films of the year. Matthew Goode is especially great in the film and if I had my way he would've been an oscar nominee for his villaness turn as Uncle Charlie.
With this post I miss Mia Wasikowska because she's such a skilled actor who gets overlooked
I love this film but my own "Horror Actressing" MVP is absolutely Jacki Weaver - she's part of one of the few genuinely terrifying sequences and nails a full character arc... what? 3 scenes maybe?
Love Wasikowska in it and Nicole... well, Nicole did her best (what a nonsensical character to try and make "real")
she is so underrated!
This, Kids are Alright, and Maps to All Stars are masterpieces.
I’m obsessed with the soundtrack for the film. From Glass’s composition (the piano piece India practices with her uncle), to Mansell’s score, and most delightfully, the song “Becomes the Color” which makes the ending for me (and it’s final shot).
The movie itself seems to be an exercise in style and mood textures, which I have no problem with, but the story elements are a little bland and tired, and for my money, My Summer of Love is both a brilliant tone poem AND has a killer story with two powerhouse performances.
I love Kidman, but she had very little do here aside from her “tear you apart” diva moment, haha.
*its, not it's, thanks iPhone.
Manny -- I really went into it this time with the criticism about the film being mostly just style on my mind, because that was the complaint I'd heard the most in the past, and I think MW's performance really ultimately elevates it above that. She makes India so fascinating and complicated and somehow, despite all the weirdness, genuinely human and small and sad to me -- I think Kidman's character is as stated above even more than Kidman can make complete sense of, but I also give the film some lenience in this regard because it is, above all, a heightened melodrama. Still I think Mia makes the best base human sense of an outsized character. Agreed on the soundtrack though, it's an absolute gem.
Stoker is one of the best modern Gothic films and one of the few good ones to be written directly for the screen. The cast is incredible across the board. Wasikowska nails this role.