Stuck (2007)

Submitted by corwin on Sun, 5 Jul 2009 8:30pm

Over the weekend, Dustin and I discovered we both had Stuck in our instant viewing queues, so we decided to go ahead and watch it as part of our regularly scheduled movie night. Stuck is Stuart Gordon's take on on actual events that took place in Fort Worth, Texas. After a night of partying, a nurse's aide named Chante Mallman hit a pedestrian while driving home. Instead of stopping and calling for help, she panicked and drove home with the man lodged headfirst in her windshield, bleeding profusely. She parked the car in the garage, and went inside to go to bed while the man bled to death.

This isn't the first time I've seen this particular plot dramatized. It's a favorite of crime shows; I've seen it on CSI and one of the Law & Orders. But it's a whole different beast under the directon of Stuart Gordon. He cut his teeth on H. P. Lovecraft adaptations like Re-Animator and From Beyond, and gave us the inimitable Dagon a few years back. Stuart Gordon doesn't pull punches.

The first act is fairly slow. It's meant to build as much sympathy for both of the main characters as possible. Stephen Rea's newly homeless Thomas Bardo is easy to empathize with. A run of bad luck leaves him with a bundle of clothing as his sole possession as he wanders the street looking for someplace he can spend the night. Watching him, I couldn't help but think "there but for the grace of god go I...." Mena Suvari's Brandi Boski, on the other hand, is doing well and getting better. She's in line to become the head nurse's assistant because of her willingness to work extra hours and perform the more unpleasant tasks asked of her. Her night starts on a high note, partying with friends at a club and getting some kind of drug from her dealer boyfriend. While she's not the most sympathetic of characters at this point, she's also not totally unlikable.

That changes completely after the accident, as she quickly becomes one of the most reprehensible human beings I've ever seen. From the realism of the accident on through Bardo's almost superhuman ability to survive the movie becomes almost excruciating to watch. As I said, Gordon pulls no punches, and shows us everything. Further, he clearly has no sympathy at all for Boski, and her character is all the more horriffic by the realization that the writers haven't strayed too terribly far from the actual events. Like most of the horror that works best for me, there is nothing supernatural going on here at all. This is something that could happen to any of us at any time.

As hard as it was to watch at times (and I admit there was one point where even I had to say "Oh, come on, that was really not necessary!"), Stuck was really well done. For all it's obligatory gore, it was very much a character-driven story, even when most of the characters were beneath contempt. And unlike most "based on actual events" movies, it stayed close enough to reality to be all too plausible. The only part that felt overly padded to me was the first act, but I understand that they were trying to make everyone as sympathetic as possible without straying into caricature.

This is not a movie for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Stuck will make you squirm no matter who you are, and it may well damage your faith in humanity. It definitely earned it's negative 0.8 Bolls.