Stuck

Based on true events, director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Edmond, From Beyond, Dagon) brings to life the series of events that led to an ordinary young women running over, kidnapping, and torturing an innocent man.

Brandi Boski (Mena Suvari) is a diligent and considerably empathetic care worker in a residential home and having been offered a promotion, she goes out to celebrate in a big way. Meanwhile on the other side of town Tom (Stephen Rea) has recently been made redundant and is kicked out of his flat with little more than the clothes he is wearing and a photograph of himself in younger, happier times.

The Hitchcockian suspense begins. As Brandi drives home after a night on the town and Tom is nonchalantly treading the streets their fate is sealed, and yes, the inevitable happens. Brandi’s car hits him head-on, Tom is lifted off the ground and smashes head on through the windscreen; shards of glass cut into him, holding him fast. Seemingly unperturbed by the mutilated body on her dashboard, or just in plain shock, Brandi accelerates home. Shockingly nobody notices, apart from another homeless man who, in one of the funniest parts of the film, fruitlessly exclaims to a police officer “The guy was stuck on the windshield…Like a God damn bug!”

As the name suggests both characters are well and truly stuck, particularly Brandi who, as circumstances worsen, becomes more and more concerned with violently covering up this horrific accident. Indeed Brandi’s character begins to resemble the psychotic Annie Wilkes in Robert Reiner’s “Misery”.

A side from the macabre sense humour, Stuart argues that the film deals with social ills at large; “No one will take responsibility for their actions these days, the film illustrates a self-absorbed society in which there is little caring for anyone else.” This is certainly apparent in societies treatment of Tom. First he is kicked out of his apartment and onto the streets, and then stymied at the employment office and later thrown out a public park by a police officer. The statement “It’s your choice” continuously confronts him. Stuart argues though that “there is no choice, this is the nice way to say you have to do this.” Tom’s ostracisation coupled with the ignorance and fear or Brandi is a grim recipe for disaster. Perhaps more black comedy than horror, Stuck’s strength is in its ability to embrace the absurd. Gordon, evidently, is unashamed of including even the most ridiculous scenes; a furry lap dog called Princess licking the open wounds of Tom’s leg comes to mind.

Stuck is out on 9th January.