Look out for more coverage of
Stuck in our magazines

SUBJECT: Stuck

The most disturbing aspect of Mena Suvari’s new Horror film, is that it’s based on a true incident that occurred in Texas in 2001.

Survari portrays Brandi, a compassionate retirement home caregiver who is in-line for a promotion. Driving home from a club after too many drinks and pills, she accidentally hits Tom (Stephen Rea), a homeless man, the impact smashing his body head first through her car’s windshield. Realizing the accident will extinguish her promising future, instead of saving Tom she plans to let him die and dispose of the body later. Faced with this reality, Tom knows he must escape if he wants to live...

Mena Suvanri sat down with Hollywood Hotline to discuss this fascinating, albeit macabre, project.

Q: To play Brandi, do you have to sympathize or justify what she does?:
A: In real life the woman’s name was Chante Mallard, and I believe that Chante and Brandi are inherently good people. I’ve always been really interested in psychology and criminal psychology in particular and what makes people do the things that they do.
I feel like, number one, Brandi and Chante, they weren’t in the right mind set when this happened. I don’t feel that they set out to be put in this situation. Brandi doesn’t aim for the man that she hits. I think if she were given the choice she wouldn’t have wanted to go through any of it or be put in that situation.
What was so interesting to me was dissecting what makes somebody snap and really go to that extreme. I feel that Brandi is somewhat ignorant about the system and she’s afraid. I think she is afraid to lose everything that she has worked so hard for which isn’t much, but she has her small little world and she has this job that she’s not so crazy about but I think there are a lot of people in a situation like that where she’s faced with possibly losing her own life.
And what is that? That’s survival of the fittest. You know, primal instinct. Do we all have that within us that if we’re really put into that situation, what will we do to save ourselves. So that was really what was so interesting and fascinating to me.
She ultimately snaps and just starts reacting. I think she loses all ability to have any consciousness of the situation and she has to justify it for herself. I actually watched Misery several times because that was my inspiration for this film – Kathy Bates in that movie really just kind of going to that extreme.

Q: How much did you do in terms of studying this character? Did you go back to the locales and the places where this happened?
A: No, I wasn’t able to. It took place in Ft. Worth, Texas in 2001 and we shot in New Brunswick which is pretty far away from there. I basically educated myself about her and the story and the incident as much as I could. I didn’t get the opportunity to meet her. She’s serving 50 years to life.

Q: How was it working with Stephen Rea again?:
A: Oh wonderful. We worked together on The Musketeer in 2001 so it was great to be able to work with him again. I was so excited that he wanted to be a part of it. That’s fun for me. It’s comforting when you work with the same people again, whether it’s behind the scenes or in front of the camera. It’s just kind of like a family.

Q: How challenging was it to play opposite him in some of those scenes in the garage where he’s stuck in the car’s windshield?
A: It was very intense. I got really frustrated because it was a particular kind of film making. You didn’t really have time. [We would do] one or two takes and I said I can’t go from 0 to 90 in one second. But I was trying to use that. I was just trying to use the intensity and what’s available to me to draw from because it’s very, very intense. It’s the emotional experience. It was like losing my mind. I hadn’t really gone to that before and I just had to go for it.

Written by Sheila Roberts. Back to top

Images above © ThinkFilm
Feature © 2008 Visual Imagination.
Not for reproduction.

Keep up with the latest movie news, reviews and features with every issue of Film Review

VI DIRECT
Stores Info

You can order any of our magazines via this
secure service.

To SUBSCRIBE to
FILM REVIEW, use these
links to our stores: