Stuck

The majority of other reviews I perused for Stuck (2007) were quite generous, lauding the film as unique and the type of horror movie that America needs to make more of. I must politely but firmly disagree. First off, Stuck is not a horror movie. Horrifying, yes. Difficult to watch at times, yes. But there is not an ounce of scare, chill, thrill, or suspense in the whole thing. It would be unfair to equate this film with Eli Roth's particular brand of torture horror (a la the Hostel films), but it has more in common with that subgenre than with any traditional interpretation of horror.

Inspired by a true story, Stuck follows nurse's aide Brandi (Mena Suvari) during a night of drinking, drugs, and pedestrian hit-and-run. Except, unlike most hit-and-runs, the victim (Stephen Rea) comes along for the ride, lodged in the windshield of Brandi's car. This is just about where the similarities between the true story and the film end, as the rest of Stuck relays a story of the victim's struggle to survive that is often so far removed from reality that it's hard to swallow.

In Stuck, writer/director Stuart Gordon has taken a novel and interesting premise and twisted it into a fairly standard and mundane story, replete with a mountain of cliches about underdogs, survival, and stupidity. This movie wants to be better than it is. There are hints and little tidbits thrown out about the character's backgrounds, only to be forgotten and left by the wayside. The movie is a tad short, clocking in at about 80 minutes, leaving the audience to wonder what improvements may have been rendered in an extra 20 or 30 minutes.

Character development is a serious pitfall in this film. There's no one to root for. Everyone is so one-dimensional that it's hard to really care one way or the other. Even the victim, Thomas, garners little sympathy, and the man is stuck through a friggin' windshield! We should care. We should feel his pain. But we don't. We don't know him. We don't know anything about him other than that he's a sad sack who's down on his luck. For a guy like this, being smashed by a car would be a blessing. He seems to have little to live for and almost no prospects. So, you'll excuse me for being confused when Thomas stubbornly refuses to die. Nothing we've been shown about this man would indicate either an overwhelming desire to live or the reserves of strength necessary to extract himself from his predicament.

Brandi's serious lack of character development is a whole other matter. She's completely one-dimensional. I've never seen anyone so obstinatley stupid and unwilling to take any sort of action on a situation. She clearly would like to be rid of the man in her windshield, but is yet unwilling to do anything to remedy the situation. She won't call 911, she won't assess the situation, she won't help the man she hit, she doesn't offer him anything for pain, and she seems unwilling to put him out of his misery. So what does she do? Not much. Has sex, goes to work, hangs out. Pretty much anything but deal with the massively fucked-up situation in her garage.

Anyway..... moving on. The visuals and effects are so-so. The attempt at a slow-motion first-person shot of Thomas going through the windshield is fairly terrible. The glass doesn't break right, the pacing is terrible, and Thomas is quite obviously a big clumsy stunt-dummy. Mercifully, the gore is kept within believable limits, although the blood oozing out of one of Thomas's wounds looks more like muddy sludge than blood. And a scene in which a dog licks the splintered edge of Thomas's open fracture tibia is just completely gratuitous.

The acting is fair, given the constraints of the script. Mena Suvari's white-girl cornrows are only slightly less distracting than Jared Leto's in Panic Room. What is slightly more distracting and weird is Suvari's subtle yet noticeable forehead acne (no, it's not part of the character; it's all Suvari), although I suppose that's not particularly relevant. Brandi's boyfriend/drug dealer Rashid (Russel Hornsby) is the highlight of where this movie actually does shine: dark comedy. Rashid's street-tough exterior and cool-guy moves quickly dissolve in the face of his girlfriend's predicament, and the twin possibilities of murder and prison. Rashid is left hilariously emasculated, and his failed attempts to control the situation feel wondrously real in the midst of a hackneyed script.

In the end, Stuck's unique premise gets buried in a mountain of sophomoric screenwriting cliches and mediocre acting. Only the film's well-played gallows humor serves to make this film anything but forgettable. That, and Mena Suvari's cornrows. Man, those things are distracting.

Plot & storyline: 5/10

Cinematography & effects: 4/10

Music & mood: 5/10

Performances: 6/10

The Reverend says: 5/10