Nicole Kidman in Stoker

It seems like Nicole Kidman has fully dropped the botox and having a career renaissance. We’ve all somehow forgotten that this is the same actress who owned much of the early noughties with a range of sterling performances in To Die For, Moulin Rouge!, The Hours, Dogville, Birthday Girl and Birth. But then there were stone-cold, stinky cadavers – The Invasion, Trespass and even desperately appearing in an Adam-Sandler-Jennifer-Aniston crapfest Just Go With It, leaving her career in a need of resuscitation.

Now we’ve recently a remarkable rebirth of her talent, with Kidman nailing down superb, emotionally nuanced turns in Rabbit Hole, HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn and the Cannes controversy-stirring The Paperboy, where she plays white-trash, middle-age sexpot Charlotte Bless. And then there’s Stoker – South Korean extraordinaire Chan-wook Park’s English-language debut – which gives Kidman a rather deliciously deranged and unhinged turn as a psychopathic matriarch Evelyn Stoker, which would give Faye Dunaway a run for her money. Next year, she’s due to play iconic Grace Kelly in Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco, as if she wasn’t born to play the role.

Watch the stylish, eerily unnerving trailer below and bask in some Kidman psycho-bitch glory.

It basically revolves around Kidman’s Evelyn Stoker (who runs the goddamn place) and her daughter India (Mia Wasikowska looking in fine form) going ballistic when the father dies of a mysterious accident, and the estranged Uncle Charlie (Matthe Goode handsomely gliding into the fore) turns up to makes matter even worse. If that sounds like very Hitchcockian Shadow of a Doubt, that’s because it’s deliberately referenced here, with Wentworth ‘Prison Break’ Miller (yes, you condescending fools, the guy can write!) penning the screenplay with loving homages to Hitchcock.

So my conclusion is this: Hitchcock + Oldboy director Chan-wook Park + Kidman = crazy, loony, blood-curdling cinematic event oozing in style.

And if you’re still doubting Kidman’s ferocious talent, here’s a clip of her as the trailer trash Charlotte Bless in Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy.