Since about 2022, TikTok has been trying to spark a twee revival. For those who don’t know, twee refers to the period between the late 2000s and the early to mid-2010s, inspired by mid-century modernism, mod culture, and all things whimsical. Most of us associate twee with Williamsburg, cat-eye glasses, typewriters, Zooey Deschanel, or every Wes Anderson film ever. But if you’re a horror fan, there’s another film that deserves a spot in the conversation: Stoker (2013).
Directed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden), Stoker is basically twee for people who also love a brutal “good for her” movie. It has all the twee signifiers: Peter Pan collars, saddle shoes, a piano, and a strange, sensitive protagonist named India (Mia Wasikowska). But instead of playing the ukulele and listening to The Smiths, India has to deal with the tragic death of her father and the arrival of her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode, who talked about what it was like playing a “sociopathic character” with us in 2013), a charismatic man who just might be hiding a terrible secret.
Watch the trailer below:
If you search Stoker online, you will undoubtedly find tweet after tweet and post after post about the piano scene. But I don’t want you to focus on that (even though there’s a reason everybody talks about it). Instead, I want you to focus on the fact that Stoker is beautiful—everything from a hard-boiled egg to a field of blood-soaked flowers is shot so you want to frame these images in your home.
And, as this Letterboxd user says, Stoker “does for belts, sand castles, staircases, pianos, pencils, pencil sharpeners, ice cream, freezers, phone booths, shoes, duck hunts, dinner, garden shears, shovels, metronomes, and showers what Psycho did for showers.”
It’s this juxtaposition—the cutsey, 2010s twee aesthetic mixed with some genuinely brutal violence—that makes Stoker such “a shocking and lurid journey.” Watch it on Amazon Prime, and be sure to take a moment to thank Park Chan-wook for doing that with Nicole Kidman’s hair.
And if you love Stoker, let me know: @ashjenexi on Instagram and X.
Categorized: News
