Sophomore Ally Knighton won Honorable Mention in the March Asbury Park Press “Student Voices” essay contest. This month’s Asbury Park Press Student Voices question for students in grades 7-8 and 9-12 was, “What was your favorite movie ever and why?  You can read Ally’s entry below.

You are walking down the basement stairs; dark, cool, untouched for days. The cobwebs are so thick that they rest on your face like a gag, preventing you from breathing the musty air. There are three lights separating you and where you need to go. Lift your arm and swing the first, making the light loop away and then back, the fluorescence just reaching the rays of the second. You continue this way until you reach the freezer. You open the lid and place the packages inside. Take notice; the weight doesn’t cause the other items to sink down, instead they seem to go around something. You clean away a few frozen meats and are met with the icy body of your beloved housekeeper. Yet this, this does not frighten you. Cover the corpse again and return to the entrance, the three lights swinging behind you. This is Stoker.

After the untimely and fiery death of her father, India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) apparently well traveled and distant Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) appears to take care of her, his precious niece, and her unstable mother (Nicole Kidman). At first, he seems tolerable and kind, but his character development over a short two hours will always leave those who watch entranced. Charlie wants nothing more than to grow closer to his dear India-and will stop at nothing to keep them together.

Wasikowska embodies every dynamic trait. At twenty five, she masters the Kubrick Stare and the horror genre, leaving everything she touches with the perfect amount of gore and grim. Stoker adds to her resume in a spectacular way, along with bringing a new sense of very real fear to psychological thrillers.

Stoker shows a dark and twisted side of family values, capturing the way that protectiveness and closeness can isolate and petrify. Charlie is obsessed with India and begins replacing her father, even wears his belt. But, when it’s around her nanny’s, her first ever crush’s, and her own mother’s neck, one thing is very clear; Do Not Disturb the Family.