**Official Spoiler for IDENTITY** Be warned, results inside!

[human2k]

Article

Moriarty, you evil genius, you!

I sent this review to Harry, and hadn't heard back or seen it on the site. I figured he's pretty swamped (as I'm sure you are) so I thought I would send this to you!

Oats here, and I just got back from seeing the new John Cusack psychological thriller, Identity. I give this film a whole hearted recommendation (and hopefully more people will agree with me than they did after my reviews of Head of State and The Hot Chick.) Even though Cusack is featured most prominently in the trailers, the film is filled with a great cast, John C McGinley, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina ... even Jake Busey has a few great moments.

I'll try not to give any spoilers, at least any more than you get from the previews.

It's a dark and stormy night and a group of strangers are brought together at a rundown motel some where in the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. One by one they start dying in different and disturbing ways. Then they realize they all share the same birthday ... but soon we discover they're connected even closer than that.

That's all I'll give you for plot.

At first glimpse, and after one surprising death with a baseball bat, this seems like your run-of-the-mill slasher flick. But considering the producers probably wouldn't have been able to get this cast together for such a thing you realize there's something else, something deeper ... and you're not disappointed. By the time we're given the answer (or think we have been given it) we're whisked through a third act which gives all the answers.

The film looks great. At some point you feel like reaching for a towel. The screen is constantly filled with rain and shadows and dark places lit briefly by lightning which only reveals more dark places. Director James Mangold does a great job of keeping the audience on edge, even when we know the scares are coming.

But then comes the final two minutes which seems to suck the wind out of the whole thing. It's well worth seeing because every minute, every moment leading up to the end is a thrill ride ... the last two minutes is like the anti-climactic push back to the station at the end of the roller coaster.

I'll spoil it below. For those who don't want to know what happens, stop here and feel free to flame me in the talkback. For everyone else ...

Spoiler warning.

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Getting closer

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There's a monster at the end of this book!

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Okay, here we go.

In the end we find that the kid is the most violent of the crazed guy's personalities.

I can accept that the only reason he could commit such murders is because it's all part of the convict's psychosis. But why bother with the flashbacks showing how he did it all? It seemed the director was trying to give a logical answer to an illogical puzzle. After the movie people were outside trying to figure it all out, but it was like debating over a quiz that everyone had the correct answer to. If the film had just given us the final moment with the kid and the claw and Amanda at the orchard I would have loved it. Then we would have had to figure out when he had the time, or opportunity, to knock off the other personalities ... and that would have made for some great after-movie discussions.

I'm not sure if that even makes sense without seeing the film.

Oats

Actually, Oats, it doesn?t really make sense out of context. If anyone?s still reading, they don?t mind spoilers, so I?ll try to make it clearer...
You know the film Donald Kaufman is writing in ADAPTATION? THE THREE? Well, this is that film. Thanks for the review, Oats, and I look forward to checking this one out this coming weekend.
Q]

 

[human2k]

bump.

 

[neomits]

DO NOT GO SEE THIS F*CK*NG MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


OMG I JUST GOT BACK AND IT IS THE WORST THING EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I'll explain more after I'm done with my rage

 

[SyahM]

Originally posted by: neomits
DO NOT GO SEE THIS F*CK*NG MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG I JUST GOT BACK AND IT IS THE WORST THING EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll explain more after I'm done with my rage

rage because of a movie? is the ticket that expensive, how much did you pay for it?

 

[neomits]

7 bucks



ok let me explain why I extra hate it.... the movie might not be the satan's child trying to kill moviegoers but it was still bad.


So my one friend and I want to go see Confidence tonight, but our other buddy has got a date and she is wants to see Identity with him tonight and he still would like to catch Confidence later this weekend. SO he convinces us to go see Identity also instead. We lie with him just to mess that we wont' go see Identity but we do anyway because we are nice guys. After sitting through what I'd call a decent movie up until the end when it turns into a complete pile of sh*t my buddy and I ride back to our place discussing how much we disliked the movie. We walk into our room to find my other friend and his date sitting around talking. Now I flash through my head (we left the theater as fast as humanily possible and drove directly home.. how did he get here before us) and then it dawns on me that he did NOT go see the movie! I HATE HIM FOREVER AND THIS MOVIE WILL REMAIN IN MY HEAD AS THE WORST THING EVAR!


Thus is my rant

 

[syzygy]

If the film had just given us the final moment with the kid and the claw and Amanda at the orchard
I would have loved it. Then we would have had to figure out when he had the time, or opportunity, to
knock off the other personalities ... and that would have made for some great after-movie discussions.

the film exceeded its quota of wierd twists. it played and decieved the audience in the same way 'the
usual suspects' did. they cheated. i despise that.

the first twist involves learning you have been inside the head of a nut as he recreates the events of his
killing spree. this comes out of nowhere. no hint or clue is given, which gives the creators carte blanche
to place these events inside the head of a genetically re-wired franko-chimp or something.

and then the child ! ! ! they just hide this kid in the background for 99.9 percent of the movie and then
conveniently justify how he was the killer all along. stoooopid !

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: syzygy


the first twist involves learning you have been inside the head of a nut as he recreates the events of his
killing spree. this comes out of nowhere. no hint or clue is given, which gives the creators carte blanche
to place these events inside the head of a genetically re-wired franko-chimp or something.

Though I hated the movie, I disagree. One thing they did VERY well was misdirect you from the truth overtly while subtly giving you clues to the real truth. It's just a shame that the truth was so damn stupid, and rendered the whole film irrelevant.

 

[syzygy]

Though I hated the movie, I disagree. One thing they did VERY well was misdirect you from the truth overtly while subtly giving you clues to the real truth. It's just a shame that the truth was so damn stupid, and rendered the whole film irrelevant.

the only clues i remember were those around the ray liotta character. i figured how he had just appeared in middle of
the night, flashed a badge, and more or less controlled access to the car radio did not make him kosher.

but the bizarre shyte does not begin until after you learn that you are inside the nut's head. the whole film, up to
that point, proceeds quite logically, like a typical mystery, with all the events in the action being given a rational
explanation.

the dumbest scene, in terms of how the killings were explained at the end to show the kid was the killer, is the 'accidental' death by the kid's stepfather. how could the kid have set up an accident ? and it was a true,
undeniable accident, at least as it was depicted in the film ?

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: syzygy

the only clues i remember were those around the ray liotta character. i figured how he had just appeared in middle of
the night, flashed a badge, and more or less controlled access to the car radio did not make him kosher.

Well, there was the case file at the beginning with the circle of 10, there was Cusack in room 1, Cusack popping the pills, and the poem about the man on the stairs which is from "The Psychoed" by Hughes Mearns.

Actually the only question I have is: After the 2 prisoners killed the driver, how the hell did they get out of the car? Last time I checked prisoner transports don't conveniently have inside door handles in the back, and they didn't break the windows. I realize it was all fantasy, but still.

 

The film was too easy. The writers got to cheat by adding the killer's multiple personalities as the reason for everything. I would have liked to have seen the first half of the film become a murder mystery with no supernatural/psychological slant.

I thought the first half was brilliant but it all came crashing down the second the weird stuff started.

 

[pulse8]

I'll have to disagree with all of you.

Up until they reveal that the whole movie takes place in the guy's head, I was really disappointed. They had every element of a crappy horror film and then redeemed themselves with a nice twist.

Between the Indian burial ground, the whole birthday on the same day thing and when John Cusack figured out that they all had states as their last names I was wondering, "What kind of crappy plot is this?" It's not different than any other film. Then they reveal what's really going on and it made the movie so much better on so many levels. I was a bit disappointed in the end. I would have rather they didn't wrap everything up in a nice little package like it was, but I was overall satisfied with the movie.