Identity

Before going to see this film, I had been warned "it's better if you leave fifteen minutes before the end." Of course, being a reviewer, I was not at liberty to do so, but the time came when I thought "Ah, these'll be the awful tacked on fifteen minutes in question then." And I checked the time, and realised I was wrong. And then it happened again, with an even worse ending. It happened four times. That said, none of these possible conclusions resulted from any genuine mystery in the film's overwrought storyline. The loose ends which the final denoument resolved were so obviously loose all along that the only thing remaining in question was whether or not the scriptwriter had noticed. The business with the police officer and his dangerous prisoner was also transparent. Whilst Identity couldn't manage mystery, it was pretty hot on confusion, which meant that it was some time before I could be certain it wasn't doing anything clever; this, it might be said, generated a modicum of suspense, and prevented me from checking the time too often.

Starting off with a rather nicely put together montage of incidents and accidents, much of it appearing in reverse (succeeding where Irreversible failed), Identity introduces a bunch of characters several of whom are potentially likable and interesting. They're decent thriller material, and certainly above average for a slasher movie, which is what this quickly devolves into. Capable actors work hard to maintain our interest as most of these characters start to come apart, descending into cliche. Amanda Peet does a good job with her Tippi Hedren role, but is let down at the end, when her earlier physical competence seems to be forgotten. The child character is worst of all, desperately predictable and tediously played. Ray Liotta and John Cusack struggle to keep their heads above the water. What ought to be moving or frightening moments are ruined by cliched camerawork, and the film also fails to put out on the horror level, providing only a few limp bodies and loud noises where there ought to have been gore.

Identity's deepest problem is that it's not sure of its own identity. It doesn't know whether it wants to be a slasher movie, a psychological thriller or a supernatural revenge tragedy, and contradicts itself by trying to combine the three. What's left is a muddy mess. Approaching the issue of multiple personality disorder with all the subtlety of 'the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing', Identity succeeds only in butchering itself, like this year's Frailty. It has similarly unpleasant underlying attitudes towards women, however it may try to disguise them. Not one to watch alone on a dark night, when there's probably something more inspiring, like a test card, on instead.