Film suffers from identity crisis

Rating: 4/10 (20 April 2005)

IDENTITY has an interesting if somewhat trite idea at its core. Unfortunately, the execution and the script destroy the whole concept. In order for a story like IDENTITY to work, the characters had to be compelling 3-dimensional folks with depth. Without interesting characters, the storyline suffers so much that the whole thing ends up feeling like a waste of time and a cheat. Had the characters been compelling, the sketchy concept would have worked because the movie-going audience would have believed the killer would have actually spent time in creating these people (or muses) and would rather spend time with them, and tormenting them, instead of the killer being alone with himself and tormenting himself.
As of now, the characters in IDENTITY are so boring and forgettable, or interchangeable, that it makes me wonder why would the killer even bother coming up with them? Or why would anyone in the audience care about these people, or types, at all? The film ends up being totally pointless and very predictable, and because of this, IDENTITY is surely one of the worst films I've seen in a while. If it wasn't for the excellent cinematography, which was crisp and beautiful on the DVD, I wouldn't have given this film 4 stars, more like 1 star.
Don't bother watching it.