With the film Stoker, people will take away what work they put into trying to understand it. Every member of the audience must determine and decide how far down the rabbit hole he/she wants to go. Since this review is meant to be read by the common populace, I will keep the knowledge that I have weaned from this movie to a bare minimum in these passages.
Stoker is open to many different interpretations, yet the parts entailed for them are not just random bits heaped together. The words spoken by all the characters but the teenage boys has weighted meaning, everything veiled symbols unlocked and understood only by the scant exposition.
Discordant, odd, or unique actions and images display fresh and eventually vivid character-izations. These are helped further along by a game cast that drowns itself in this material and yet keeps its eyes above water. What is at first frustratingly foggy clears on later reflection.
Excluding a couple minor tidbit faults near the beginning, this film is completely different from other would-be riddle pictures of its ilk like The Shining because it addresses common themes and things branded into our society that we overlook because we can't understand them. Stoker's being and existence is not just for our decryptive pleasure, but to slyly and half-honestly better help us understand somethings we've become numb to.
The Director, Park Chan-wook of the original Oldboy fame, has cracked a long-analyzed elusive code. What a master. And what a treat.