Mena Suvari in Indie Horror Film 'Stuck'
Re-Animator Writer-Director Stuart Gordon Spins Bloody Yarn
Aug 6, 2008
Brandi (Mena Suvari, sporting corn-rows) is a hard-working aide at a nursing home on her way up for a promotion, always taking Saturday shifts even if she wants to spend time with her cheating, drug-dealing boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby). Then there's Tom (Stephen Rea), an out-of-work sadsack who can no longer afford rent at his apartment and once failing a job interview, he's on the streets like a bum. Around 2 a.m., after a night of hard partying, an inebriated Brandi strikes Tom with her car, breaking his legs, but his body half remains lodged in her windshield. Brandi panics, drives home, and locks Tom (still stuck through her front window) in her garage; as she refuses to accept the consequences of her actions and tries deciding what to do with him, he refuses to die.
Premise Is Out-There Enough That It's Hard To Shake
The premise of Stuck is clever and bizarre, if not exactly airtight (Brandi driving past cops with Sam's body impaled through her windshield is played more for laughs than credibility). It's frightening to know that an event so grisly and deplorable has actually happened. John Strysik's script (with story credit given to director Gordon) layers the real-life horror story with compelling morality/ethics issues and gives us enough rooting interest for Rea's Tom living, but Suvari's Brandi is a total nitwit. It's believably performed, however, by both actors; Suvari makes us care just enough for her immature Brandi as we're compelled to see her character arc or just desserts.
Gore Is Take It Or Leave It
The explicitly bloody gore effects are convincing and disgusting, and the cruddy cinematography gives it an appropriately ugly mood. But there are some useless secondary characters, including a single man who walks his dad and a Mexican immigrant family who stumbles upon Tom at one point but never come around. The film has been getting critical praise for its jet-black, mordant humor, but it's only occasionally effective; a Pomeranian licking a bloody bone is more queasy than funny, even in a darkly comic sense. There's a scene that plugs in the right amount of dark humor, when Brandi tries explaining to her friend that she hit a deer, even after said friend sees the broken windshield and gallon of blood on the hood (must've been a big deer). Stuck is--uh--stuck somewhere in the middle; uneven, mean-spirited, but memorable.
- 2 and a half stars out of 4
