South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook has been a staple of foreign genre cinema since 2000’s border action film “Joint Security Area.” But he’s still best known for his “Vengeance Trilogy,” comprising “Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance,” “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” and its centerpiece, “Oldboy,” famous for both its hallway hammer fight barnstormer and a scene where its lead slurps up a live octopus. Park makes a perhaps belated debut in America, but he does it his way: “Stoker,” starring Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman, is a stylish Gothic thriller about family secrets, outre sexuality and serial killing.

What made you want to make a film in America?
It took me 10 years to make [my previous film] “Thirst,” from the very inception to finish. After that, I had done all the films I wanted to do. I felt I was in need of a turning point in my career. I was on the lookout for a good script, and this was just a case of good timing.

It seems like the script, though not by you, shares a lot with your previous work.
There are many ways to link this to my previous work — but when I first came across the script, I noticed the characters were different [from my previous films]. They don’t seem to have much in the way of ethical dilemmas, whereas the characters in my other films are wrought with dilemma. In “Stoker,” the characters don’t seem to have any sense of guilt. But actually it’s not that they don’t have any dilemmas or sense of guilt — they’re just better at hiding them.

What’s it like working in the U.S. versus South Korea?
The presence of the studio is stronger here. There’s a greater exchange of ideas and opinions. I found myself having to explain why I wanted certain things to be a certain way. The sheer volume of opinions is something I wasn’t used to. I found it to be quite arduous. But in the end, it proved very productive.

There’s very little violence in “Stoker.” Was that a response to your reputation as a maker of violent films — which aren’t, it should be noted, even that graphic?
It wasn’t a function of me pulling any punches. What sparked my interest in this script was that my daughter was the same age as the protagonist here. I wanted to make a film that girls the same age as India [the lead character] would come to see. Anything that came across as overly disgusting just wouldn’t do. I simply wanted to make an elegant and beautiful film [that] girls the same age as India would enjoy

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South Korean director Park Chan-wook isn’t terribly known outside of fanboy circles, but his reputation is secure, thanks mostly to the hammer-wielding, octopus-slurping genre grinder “Oldboy.” Traditionally a cult hit from a foreign filmmaker leads to a dispiriting American stint, but Park is too much a stylist to get ground up by the Hollywood machine. His English-language debut, “Stoker” finds him in the United States but working on its margins. It’s a serial killer pic, but a Park Chan-wook serial killer pic, which is to say it’s obsessed not with plot or even grisly murders but with visual design, outré ideas and a hothouse atmosphere, no doubt gleaned from watching too many American movies.

It’s a good thing the filmmaker doesn’t care about plot, because it’s not “Stoker”’s strongest point. Park decided his first American film should be the first produced script cowritten by Wentworth Miller, the star of “Prison Break.” A teenager with the loaded name of India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) loses her father in a car accident (allegedly!). The funeral brings forth mysterious uncle Charles (Matthew Goode), who intrigues her first with his handsomeness and sex appeal, and then by revealing that he likes to snap necks with his belt.

Of course, there are twists, but Miller’s script also goes to some weird places: India has the hots for her uncle, as does her widowed mom (Nicole Kidman, underused but reliably wild-eyed), and she soon finds herself turned on by his blasé treatment of other people’s lives, leading to a genuinely out there shower scene.

Park grasps onto these elements as tight as he can, doing his best to obscure the silly story with an array of fetishistic phantasmagoria. Park’s images, as ever, are fussy and borderline (and often actually) OCD. It’s not just him showing off (although it’s that, too): the power of surfaces is an idea that tends to be built into his narratives. “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” finds a woman with hot crimson eye shadow whose aggressively stylized revenge masks deeper trauma. Still, despite amplifying its transgressive bits, Park proves unable to get deeper into the script, and frankly seems bored by its machinations. Park works best when astride unbelievable tragedy, as in his best work (thus far), “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.” “Stoker” seems like a placeholder, an excuse to work out his pet themes and talents before a project captures his complete attention. (3 out of 5 Globes)

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