More known for his splatter films like Re-Animator and From Beyond, Stuart Gordon's new movie Stuck starts off deliberately crawling and horror-free, punching up the black comedy with the stories of two individuals: Brandi (Mena Suvari), a nurse aide at a retirement home trying to secure a well-deserved promotion, and Tom (Stephen Rea), a homeless down-on-his-luck poor sap who can't seem to catch any break at all. He proves to be even unluckier than he thought when one night Brandi drives under influence and her car smashes into him, sending Tom through her windshield and lodges him there.
This story might sound familiar. That's because it actually happened a few years ago and it has now become some sort of a (true) urban legend. The nurse that struck a man, got him stuck on her windshield, drove home, and left the man to die in her garage. Stuck is surprisingly pretty faithful to the real story—down to the perps' apologetic attitude—but while in real life the man died and the responsible party sent to jail, in Gordon's take the story has an important twist: the man fights back.
It's amazing how Stuck stretches this story into a feature film without dragging. A story as limited as this is usually good only for 15 minutes tops. Pretty soon either he dies or someone finds him. What Gordon did was focus on both characters in-and-out. It’s not a story about a man hit by a car and trapped in a garage. It’s not a story about a woman making a mistake and panicking. It’s both. The film starts off introducing Brandi as a responsible and kind woman, who doesn’t even complain as she patiently washes diarrhea off senior citizens. Then it spends a good deal making us feel sorry for the perpetually screwed Tom. This balance helps to highlight the comedy of the situation, because when Brandi keeps refusing to let Tom go, we don't see an evil murderous woman, but an astoundingly stupid girl who's too scared to make the wrong decision. It's hilarious to watch her try to justify her terrible actions. In that regard, Stuck is refreshing because it turns its head on the usual "things go bad" dark comedies like Very Bad Things. You actually want the perps to get caught and you're rooting for the victim to do something, instead of just sadistically waiting to use those poor casualties as humor bait.
Mena Suvari is great as the ghetto-clueless Brandi. There's a surprising sincerity in her voice when, stressed from having to hide the accident, she asks Tom "Why are you doing this to me?" It's fun to hate her, because you know that she's just a sad product of a selfish generation who have horse blinders on when it comes to their own mistakes. Stephen Rea is so calculatedly mundane as Tom that it's hard not to pity him. Of course, hard becomes impossible after seeing him pull a windshield wiper out of his stomach and cleverly using his limited environment to survive. Tom refuses to be stuck in the predicament he's in, and would rather die trying to change the situation. You can read "the predicament" as either "some crazy bitch's windshield" or "the cyclical trap that is society's lower class."
For what it is, Stuck is brilliant in its simplicity and treatment of its characters. While more centered on the emotional shockwaves of the situation, it still delivers on the blood quotient and, in true Stuart Gordon fashion, mixes disturbing images with erotic sex for comedic effect. It's a movie that's clever enough to trust the actors to carry the story, which saves it from being farcical.
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Reposted from our coverage of SF Indiefest '08.
"Stuck" opens May 30, 2008 and is rated R. Comedy, Horror, Thriller. Directed by Stuart Gordon. Written by Stuart Gordon (story), John Strysik (screenplay). Starring Mena Suvari, Russell Hornsby, Stephen Rea.
