It's easy to think of HBO's new movie Game Change as a Frankenstein story: John McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) chooses a complete nobody and builds her into a national figure, who then proceeds to destroy everything he's built. But rather than just being a personal story of tragedy, it's also like a Godzilla movie: You want to watch entire careers get decimated in the most spectacular fashion possible. And there's a slasher-movie element, too: You want to shout to Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore) as she fails to prepare for her big national television appearances, "Don't agree to that Couric interview! She's gonna rip you up!"

In fact, you know just about everything that's going to happen in Game Change, but it still somehow manages to keep you riveted by focusing on the day-to-day realities of working on a campaign. Harrelson's Schmidt does what campaign managers do—he tries to put out fires. Meanwhile, McCain's job is to focus outward and trust that his people are doing the best work of their lives behind the scenes (Ed Harris's McCain is serviceable, but he's too limber—one of the most important things to know about John McCain is that he can't comb his own hair, due to injuries he suffered as a prisoner of war, and that dignified stiffness is missing from Harris here) and Palin's job is to be on the offensive at all times. Despite what the real-life Palin wants you to believe, Moore's Palin isn't just a Tina Fey-style hatchet job; she's a complete portrait of the woman—she speaks with the candidate's popular stilted delivery while giving speeches, but her cadence becomes real and vulnerable when she's not onstage.

Game Change is far better than Recount, the Bush-Vs.-Gore HBO movie by the same writer and director. Everything from the production quality to the caliber of the performances feels more cinematic, more intense, in part because the personalities are livelier. Political wonks will find so much raw material to slobber over, and everyone else will be drawn in by the sheer movie-ness of it all. It's a great, entertaining movie about a series of train wrecks that everybody witnessed less than four years ago. Even now, you can't look away.