| 91 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
It's a righteously nasty piece of work, and a rare example of a movie that traffics in B-movie grime without a trace of "Grindhouse"-style self-consciousness.
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| 90 |
Film Threat
Matthew Sorrento
A fresh and rewarding take on cinematic terror.
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| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Stuart Gordon, the mostly under-the-radar director of "Re-Animator," pops back into view with this amusing trifle -- a piece of scuzzy tabloid noir.
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| 75 |
TV Guide
A drum-tight, extremely grisly thriller. And odd as it may sound given the subject matter, it's also surprisingly funny.
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| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Rea, with his hangdog looks and Jimmy Stewart line readings, spends a good deal of his time writhing in fake blood and broken shards - not what you'd call glamorous work, but he does it with conviction.
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| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Unlike the worthless torture porn that is destroying the genre, Stuck is a horror movie with a reason for being.
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| 70 |
Salon.com
These people can behave well or poorly, but they were already bugs on the windshield of life before their unhappy collision.
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| 70 |
The New York Times
Stuck, while not strictly a horror film, is steeped in gore and carries a seam of mocking gallows humor as relentless as that of "Sweeney Todd."
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| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Robert Abele
Suvari's increasingly loopy and cruel selfishness is its own nifty moral suspense, while Rea's sad sack vibe -- he already looks like a collision victim in the pre-accident scenes -- is a bleakly amusing counterpoint to his gritty refusal to go quietly.
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| 70 |
Variety
Ingeniously nasty and often shockingly funny as it incrementally worsens a very bad situation, then provides a potent payoff with the forced feeding of just desserts.
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| 70 |
Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
Stuck is both darkly comic and disgusting; the name alone reduces the crime to a sick joke.
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| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Laugh? Cry? I thought I'd die, but then that's the genius of Gordon.
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| 65 |
NPR
Stuart Gordon's inventions -- vivid, gruesome and occasionally quite funny -- offer a just-deserts ending and make both characters surprisingly active participants in their fates.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Mena Suvari has her best role since "American Beauty" as Brandi, a self-centered nursing home employee distinctly lacking in sympathy for anyone.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
This is not enjoyable entertainment, but it is brutally watchable.
|
| 63 |
ReelViews
There are times when it is bitingly funny and times when its bloodiness can cause a wince and a shudder - but director Stuart Gordon is not adept at blending the two extremes into a cohesive whole.
|
| 60 |
New York Daily News
A taut drama that manages to be thoughtful without forgetting it's a creep-out.
|
| 58 |
Baltimore Sun
Thanks to Suvari, audiences laugh nervously at the mortification of soul and flesh, but she doesn't really do them much of a favor. She simply keeps them watching as a would-be gross-out comedy turns into would-be gross-out tragedy.
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| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, Karl Marx said. That might explain the possibility of even making a movie such as Stuck.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
At its best, Gordon's work is bracing and pointed, though it's not for the queasy.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
Gordon made similar lurches all over the map in his previous exercise in grotesquerie, "Edmond," which was based on a David Mamet play and starred William H. Macy as, of all things, a racist misogynist on a grisly bender. Stuck could have used some of that outrageousness.
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| 50 |
Portland Oregonian
Unfortunately, the film loses its merciless rage toward the end, devolving into a stock and broadly comic thriller about unpleasant people you never quite get to know.
|
| 50 |
New York Magazine
The film becomes an aria of agony--but with a rousingly yucko finish!
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
The question is why the time, talent and treasure of such energetic and even gifted artists have been marshaled in such a disgusting and trivial genre exercise and what viewers are supposed to get out of it. Isn't life hard enough?
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
As the title of this splatter comedy by writer-director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator) indicates, he's like a bug stuck to her windshield, and that's about the level of humanity and insight one can expect here.
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