It’s at once a family drama, gothic mystery and eerie fairytale, shot through with a sense of the supernatural. Unlike Thirst, Stoker‘s character’s are ostensibly human, yet there are constant suggestions that something equally monstrous lurks beneath their pale facade. As Stoker begins, India’s life is beset by tragedy. Her father, with whom she spent most of her childhood hunting pheasant, has suddenly died in a car accident, leaving India alone in her echoing house with her embittered mother. But during the funeral, India’s estranged Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) suddenly appears – someone India’s heard about, but never met. Charismatic and urbane, he immediately charms Evelyn and earns the begrudging fascination of India, with his stories of Europe and skills as a pianist, and a battle ensues between mother and daughter for Charlie’s affections, hastened by the uncle’s skilful manipulation; for beneath Charlie’s wide eyes and beguiling smile, a hint of darkness lurks. Based on the 2010 Blacklist screenplay written by Prison Break’s Wentworth Miller, Stoker is a stylish collision of genres. It contains the dark secrets, hints of incest and repressed sexuality of a Poe story, the black humour, visual creativity and unexpected turns of events of a vintage Hitchcock mystery, all served up with verve and dark wit. There’s the same obsessive attention to minute details that Chan-wook brought to his Korean films: the sound of a leather belt creaking through trouser loops, the disquieting shots of spiders creeping up legs, repeated visual motifs, geometric wallpaper, sequences repeated yet meaning something else because of their juxtaposition… Stoker is a film put together with huge care, from editor Nicolas De Toth’s masterful interconnection of scenes, to Clint Mansell’s murmuring score. The technical mastery (and sexual tension) reaches boiling point in a single set-piece: Wasikowska and Goode’s piano duet, with an eerie piece of music composed by Philip Glass. Pared back to its purest thriller elements, you might say that Stoker’s almost a flimsy affair, and some of its intended twists may even be spotted a little sooner than intended. But Stoker’s so much more than the Sunday afternoon thriller it could have been. Filmmaking brilliance aside, Wentworth Miller’s script seldom puts a foot wrong from a dramatic standpoint, as it introduces characters who we think we know, before gradually revealing additional layers and hidden depths. The quietly insinuating dialogue suggests all sorts of things without saying them outright; no one really ever argues; instead, the snipe and jab at one another with terse, ambiguous lines. The true revelation, though, is Nicole Kidman. She runs the gamut of emotions as Evelyn, and her performance is truly mesmerising – one monologue about child rearing is an absolute show-stopping moment. Stoker is a sublime example of the modern work of gothic fiction. It has all the trappings you’d expect – those repressed feelings of sex and murder, those mysteries kept safely locked away – but it serves them up in a manner that is fresh and quite simply mesmerising. In the wrong hands, Stoker could have been flattened out into a less interesting film, a by-the-numbers thriller. But Park Chan-wook wrings every drop of creative possibility from it, and the result is a stylish, sumptuous piece of filmmaking. Stoker is out in UK cinemas on the 1st March. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.