Brandi (played by Mena Suvari, aka the hot cheerleader from American Beauty, now older with cornrows (?)) is nursing home nurse on the verge of a promotion. Thomas (played by Stephen Rae from the Crying Game) is a man down on his luck -- no job and now he has lost his apartment. Then after Brandi is partying to celebrate her soon-to-be promotion he accidently hits Thomas as he tries to walk to a homeless shelter with her car. And it's not just a little hit -- he gets smashed and ends up stuck in her windshield! Brandi freaks and drives home with the guy still stuck in her windshield. She manages to put the car (and him) into the garage of her shared apartment complex without anyone seeing. From there the rest of the story is about these two opposing people trying to deal with their situations -- Brandi trying to hide what has happened while her life spirals out of control (losing the promotion, etc) and Thomas trying to get out and get help. It's kind of interesting -- it's such a grounded story that it's relatable, and the actors are pretty good, and because it's a more character driven story you get a nice slow build to the end. The problem is there's nothing really great here. There's never that WOW moment. It plays out about how you'd expect. While it spends time with the characters, there's never really any depth to them. Compare that to I Know What You Did Last Summer which takes a car accident with fatality and flips it -- we see the kids go from happy and optimistic to dark, their futures gone as they suffer the guilt of what they have done. I've said before movies need to be two trick ponies (maybe not here, but I have said it). This movie, unfortunately, only has one. It's still pretty good, but without that second element it feels more like a B-movie with good actors than a real A- level film.
And here's the second of our car accident movies. This plays out much closer to I KNOW. Again, as in STUCK the woman hits the man with her car. This time she thinks it was a cat or dog, but when she gets home she realizes that it was a man who is now stuck to her bumper. The man tries to grab her, but she freaks and ends up smashing his head in with a hammer. What to do? Call an abulence with anti-hammer skull recreation abilities? Call the police and admit what she's done? Or try to dump the body and hope she gets away with it? Yes, like in I KNOW, she tries to get rid of the body only to have the man come back seemingly from the grave and terrorize her. And do I really need to say more? Is it horribly bad? No. Is there anything really memorable/good? No. Is there anything else going on? Well, honestly I can't remember so I'll go with no. So what you have is an okay B-movie, this time with a wackier plot, less time on character, and basically unknown actors.
So now let's take a moment. Both made in the last few years (Stuck in 2007, Hit and Run in 2009), so it's reasonable to think the makers have seen I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. so why make movies so close to that one that do less? I don't know. Both these movies start out fine, but by the midpoint they are running out of gas. Again, it's the problem of the one-trick pony. If you don't dig to that next level, if you don't have that other element you can play with, you are essentially hitting the same note over and over and over. You can do that for an hour (maybe), but after that it almost always gets old. I KNOW not only has the physical conflict of the kids vs the man they thought they killed, but it also has the psychologic story -- these happy kids losing their futures as they are haunted by the guilt of what they have done. But there's also a second element -- these two newer movies just never do anything to surprise. There's never that twist, that Holy Cr*p!!! moment, that moment that you want to text or twitter to all your friends. Nothing to generate that buzz. Nothing to fascinate. If they had some of that maybe it would have elevated them (STUCK especially since it was the better movie for me). So what you are making your low budget rip off of a hit movie from a decade ago, remember to ask yourself What's my second thing? and What are my Wow moments? Because without them, you'll never have a movie that can break out of the pack.
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