It isn't often that a vintage Last Days item is reenacted in all its grotesque glory in a feature film, so Stuck (from Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon) is what one might call a Major Motion Picture Event. Back in 2001, a nurse's aide named Chante Mallard (soon to be known as Windshield Wanda), driving under the influence of alcohol and ecstasy, struck a homeless man. At the moment of impact, the man's body lodged in her windshield, but she didn't stop or call 911. Instead, she drove home, abandoned the man to bleed to death slowly in her garage, and had sex with her boyfriend.

Stuck ingeniously mines the comic potential of this scenario—slowly at first, then ferociously—by stripping away any inconvenient details. Mallard, for instance, was poor, black, and from Texas, but Rhode Islander Brandi is played by the inherently unlikable Mena Suvari—her wide-spaced, slightly Down syndrome-y eyes and protruding forehead perfectly complemented by white-girl cornrows and stupid clothes.

We're not permitted to hate her at first. Brandi cheerfully performs her work at a retirement home, bundling up poop-smeared bedding and spraying down a naked old diarrhea sufferer who adores her so much he won't allow other nurse's aides to touch him. She's the very picture of ordinary virtue. Then, after she hits the homeless guy (Stephen Rea, whose storyline and visage are so pathetic that they almost tip into comedy before the film lets on that it's okay), there's an array of opportunities for her to repent before she goes truly berserk. The audience pulls for Brandi just past the point where it's comfortable to do so, and that makes the brilliantly extended revenge sequence all the more delicious. The only problem with Stuck is that the cinematography is dark and skuzzy. I suppose it befits the story.