Stuck is a bizarre, weird, and gruesome story of a woman who hits a homeless man and leaves him in her car windshield to die. Based on the true story of Chante Mallard who did the same back in 2001, the film does a fine job of creating tension and horror, but then destroys it with some twisted comedy that doesn’t feel right at all.
Mena Suvari plays the lead character, renamed Brandi Boski for this fictional film account. Her character, while a hard worker at a local assisted-living facility, is also self-destructive, which leads to the events after a night of hard partying.
The first half hour is a character build-up, and with the exception of Stephen Rae, nearly every performance here is terrible. The unnatural, unbelievable dialogue doesn’t help, but couple that with the performance of Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, and you’re left without much of merit. It’s bad enough to turn the movie off for good, although thankfully, it turns around with the second act.
Stuck is saved by the sheer agony Rae’s face. You feel every cut simply by looking at his expressions. The copious amounts of blood and gore certainly don’t help either. This is hardly one for the squeamish.
As Suvari slowly realizes what it is she’s done, her panic becomes the face a confused woman without a way out. Her sudden realization that her promotion at work could be on the line over the suffering of another human is a odd piece of the human psyche that only makes you question what exactly is going on in her head.
The difference between the film and the true events is that Rae finds a way out of the windshield, as opposed to tragically bleeding to death. As Rae struggles to find a way to alert people outside of the garage he’s stuck inside (a broken leg prevents him from getting too far), a series of far too convenient and contrived events follow. Many people walk by with absurd reasons to get close in an attempt to build tension. The first time it works. By the third time, it’s a cheap way to build audience sympathy.
That would be a small flaw if the movie had stayed on a straight path. Instead, it takes a sharp turn into dark comedy territory where it begins to fall apart. Suvari tries to hide the body in garbage bags, beats him in the head with a wooden plank, and tries to hire someone to kill him off. It’s done almost in the style of a twisted cartoon, with the characters suddenly becoming caricatures of their former selves. It’s jarring, and in the sense that this is attempting to tell a modified version of a true story, completely inappropriate.
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