Stuck attempts camp thrills, produces hilarious nausea

By Alexa Weibel
Published: June 6th, 2008 | 3:05pm

When the shock content of a thriller is greeted by laughter, it becomes camp — but to succeed as a camp film, humor must be detected, as opposed to, say, simple absurdity and gore.

A half-baked film with half-assed characters, Stuck is an intense study of the fateful weekend of two ill-conceived personas. Thomas (Stephen Rea) is having a bad day. Evicted that morning and failed by unemployment services, he's set to spend his first night homeless in Providence, Rhode Island. Mena Suvari plays Brandi, a corn-rowed, “Jenny from the block”–attired assisted-living caregiver who, after a night of booze and ecstasy provided by her drug-peddling boyfriend, hits Tom with her car. She drives across town like a bat out of hell, the car covered in blood and Tom's lower half dangling across the hood.

Ever so ambitious, she decides to leave him in her garage to perish, so as not to blow her chances at a big promotion. As Tom embarks on a sanguinary crawl through the windshield, Brandi, dismayed and stressed about her big day at work, asks Tom, “Why are you doing this to me?” As her psychotic nature is revealed, Brandi’s victim, too, adopts a demonic air, transformed by gross-out gore. Expect a dramatic Carrie-inspired meltdown at the conclusion, but by then you’ll either be too nauseated or laughing in disbelief.

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Stuck was released May 30, 2008.