Characters / Stoker

India Stoker

India

Played by: Mia Wasikowska

"To become adult is to become free."

A highly intelligent but emotionally withdrawn girl who loses her beloved father on her 18th birthday and is introduced to his younger brother she was unaware existed. She quickly picks up that her uncle isn't everything he claims to be.

---

• Attempted Rape: Is nearly assaulted by a classmate until Uncle Charlie shows up and turns the tables.
• Badass Bookworm: India is very well-read and ultimately very capable of violence.
• Brainy Brunette: India is very intelligent and has dark brown hair.
• Daddy's Girl: A very dark example. It's implied India might have harbored an incestous level of love for her father which she then transfers to Uncle Charlie.
• Deadpan Snarker: Much of her dialogue with her mother is this due to their strained relationship.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: India is almost unnaturally pale with very dark hair but it's her behavior that really makes her eerie.
• In Love with Your Carnage: India really warms up to Uncle Charlie after he kills Whip.
• It Runs in the Family: Sociopathy and bloodlust. It's hinted her father might have tried to control these urges by training her to hunt to give her a "safe" outlet.
• Loners Are Freaks: Her schoolmates seem to view her as such, but the fact that most of the boys fancy her exacerbates their bullying because of her lack of reciprocity. They seem to project their own disgust at themselves for being attracted to a weird loner onto the target of their attraction. They leave her alone when she starts to fight back.
• Nightmare Fetishist: India literally gets off recalling Whip's death.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: India is a solitary teenage girl who always wears old fashioned dresses or modest shirt-skirt combinations, often in silk, is attracted to her murderous uncle, and stabs her would-be rapist with a pencil when he tries to attack her. She also kills her uncle Charlie and the film ends with her accepting the family creed of murder and killing a police officer, while dressed in the same way.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: India kicks the shit out of Whip, who was about to rape her.
• The Sociopath: India gives signs of maybe being this early on and certainly a full-blown one by the end. Whether she was corrupted by Uncle Charlie or always this way is up to debate.
• Super-Senses: India seems to have something akin to these or at least a sensitivity towards what most people's brains would filter or block out.
• The Quiet One: India rarely speaks even when directly spoken to.

Charlie Stoker

Uncle Charlie

Played by: Matthew Goode

"What use is family that never comes home?"

The brother of India's late father, Richard, Uncle Charlie turns up at Richard's funeral, quickly befriending his widow, Evelyn, who invites him to stay. Cultured, charismatic and charming, Charlie claims to have been travelling the world but harbors a dark secret.

---

• Alone with the Psycho: Auntie Gin is subject to this unfortunate fate with him.
• Attention Whore: One potential explanation for why he killed his own infant brother. He didn't seem to like having to share his big brother and parents attention and affection with anyone else.
• Axe-Crazy: Murdered his little brother when he was still a child, spent years in a psychiatric institution and upon being released, murdered his big brother as well. Strangles an aunt to prevent her from spilling his secrets, murders a teenager (though the said teenager did have it coming) and ultimately tries to convince India to shoot her own mother.
• Cool Uncle: Seems this way, being charming and refined as well as driving a fast car and the girls at India's school seem very taken with him. Is actually a Creepy Uncle (see below).
• Creepy Child: As a boy, he's first shown enviously watching Richard playing happily with adorable little Jonathan. Then he waits for Richard to go and mow the lawn before leading Jonathan up the ladder of the slide. Jonathan slides down and lands uncomfortably in a deep hole in the sand pit. He begins crying and Jonathan stands over him, aloof and unconcerned, hands in pockets, looking into the distance. To say nothing of what he does next...
• Creepy Uncle: Not only is he inexplicably creepy and menacing in practically everything he says and does, he harbours incestuous lust for his niece.
• Deadpan Snarker: When he asks India why she feels at a disadvantage talking to him, she snarks that it's because until that day, the day of her father's funeral no less, she didn't even know she had an uncle. He gently snarks back that actually is because she's standing below him on the staircase.
• Enfante Terrible: The little shit murdered his toddler brother whilst he was a kid himself.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: A disturbing example as this is essentially his driving motivation. His love for his family clearly did not extend to his younger brother Jonathan but he loved his big brother Richard and his mother and father enough to kill Jonathan just so he could have them to himself. He's overjoyed to see Richard when he comes to collect him from the loony bin and can't wait to meet his sister-in-law and niece, to the point that he bursts into tears, is violently sick and ultimately murders Richard when he tells them he won't be seeing them. He's been obsessed with India ever since her birth for some reason and after meeting her, it doesn't take long for him to develop feelings of attraction to her.
• Evil Feels Good: Just look at the horrifying delight with which he lies on his back making angels in the sand having just buried his little brother alive, a big, joyous smile on his face. He also seems to really enjoy strangling people to death with his belt. A big part of his motivation seems to be to make India feel the same way, ala: Hannibal Lecter with Will Graham.
• Expy Of Claudius from Hamlet, in that he murdered his brother and moves in on his widowed sister-in-law. Subverted in that while Hamlet always hated his uncle, India comes to feel affection for him. And then some!
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: He's strikingly handsome and completely depraved and monstrous.
• Faux Affably Evil: Calm, collected, gentle, polite, laid-back and courteous but it serves to hide his creepy and evil nature from everyone but the audience.
• A Glass of Chianti: Enjoys his red wine.
• Green-Eyed Monster: To his little brother, Jonathan, who had only just learned how to climb stairs. It seems he resented the fact that his parents and big brother seemed to be showing him more attention, even though it was clearly just because he was the youngest.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: His entire motivation seems to be going about getting his family to love him in the most twisted ways imaginable.
• Ironic Echo: To his brother Richard, before killing him.
  Charlie: Of course I love you, Richard; I just have to try and love you a little less.
• Karmic Death: India shoots him dead with the shotgun of her father, the brother he killed as he attempts to get her to use it to kill her mother. It's hinted that the whole reason her father took her hunting was to prepare her for the day Charlie came for her. So she puts him down like any of the other beasts she's killed.
• Manipulative Bastard: Hell to the yeah!
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Comes from a wealthy and sophisticated family and seems to be the most tasteful out of all of them. He's also a murdering, incestuous psychopath.
• Psychopathic Manchild: While his extensive reading in the psychiatric institution has enabled him to grow into a very cultured and erudite man of the world, his mental age doesn't actually seem to have changed from when he was a child willing to murder anyone else who received affection and love and he's essentially still a little boy acting out for attention, which is he often comes across as quite childlike in his mannerisms. Matthew Goode confirms that he deliberately played him this way.
• Psychotic Smirk: Gives a rather sinister one whenever things seem to be going his way.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Is almost always dressed up to the nines, the only exception apparently being when he wears a T-Shirt to do the gardening. However as smart as his clothes are, the colours and styles he chooses make him look more like a twenty-something fresh out of prep school than a thirty-something who's been travelling the world. Word of God confirms that this was a deliberate choice to reflect how Charlie's spent his formative years in an asylum. Emotionally speaking, India's probably more mature than he is!
• The Sociopath: Seems more of a psychopath as his childhood was as far as we can see, nothing more than loving and happy, suggesting that he was born the way he is. He's highly intelligent but completely lacking in empathy, to the point that he murdered his little brother while was still a child and feels no remorse for it. He's genuinely shocked when his brother tells him that he won't be going back with him to be introduced to his family and seems utterly nonplussed, having no idea what he's done wrong. He's also manipulative and superficially charming and as an adult, continues to see murder as an appropriate solution to problems. What's even more disturbing is that he seems to have encouraged India's burgeoning antisocial traits to the point that by the end, she's become a sociopath herself.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Always speaks in a quiet, measured tone, never raising his voice once. And he certainly gets off on violence.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He has the looks and personality, on the surface anyway.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: It can't really get more troubling than burying your infant brother alive in a sandpit because you want more attention.
• The Unfettered: Will stop at absolutely nothing to get what he wants.
• Villainous Breakdown: Has a minor one in the car when Richard tells him he won't be taking him to see Evelyn and India.
• Villainous Rescue: Just about the one time in the film you're relieved to see him is when he turns up to rescue India from getting raped by strangling her would-be attacker with his belt.
• Walking Spoiler: Not as much as some examples but you may have noticed all of those white spaces and villainous tropes!
• Wicked Cultured: Has a genuine passion for fine wine and cuisine. Due to his time reading whilst in the nut-house he's become very sophisticated and knowledgeable about life's finer things. As for wicked, well, haven't you got that impression yet?
• Would Hurt a Child: Played with as he was a child himself when he murdered Jonathan but given that Jonathan was only four, it's still as horrific as an adult killing a child.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Essentially uses Evelyn to get close to India, then when he's more or less wooed her, he strangles Evelyn and tries to convince India to shoot her.