Irritating!

Rating: Null/10 (29 June 2003)

While hardly going to be the worst film released this year, Identity is by no means decent. Starting off with a familiar, if entertaining premise it promises much but ultimately fails as both a horror film and as an excercise in audience manipulation.
The casting of Ray Liotta and John Cusack, however, is one of the film's strengths. The slightly eccentric decision pays dividends as some of the best scenes in the film involve confrontations between their two very different characters, allowing thespian sparks to fly. It also allows for the film to add a shade of humanity to its lean 90 minute running time. The rest of the cast is decent, with the possible exception of John C. McGinley who comes across as hammy in his supporting role.
Shot in dark, desaturated tones, Identity even looks the part of a good horror film. The use of weather to accentuate moods of the characters is as ever, a reliable device for tension while it also allows the charcters to meet- a nifty if standard plot device. It harks back to the Robert Zemekis film What Lies Beneath in its tribute to Hitchcock- a kind of neo-Hitchcock style, I guess it would be called.
However it is due to the unspeakably awful final 30 minutes, that this film comes across as underwhelming. In an age old trick, director Mangold, pulls the rug from the audience's feet leaving a multitude of seemingly unanswerable questions for them to decipher. Yawn. Instead of coming across as scary, perplexing or even thought-provoking, the final section of the movie is frustrating, uneven and a con. The ending is so anti-climactic and ripped off that you feel like throwing a big brick at the screen and shouting obscenities at the ushers when you leave the multiplex.
Identity's first hour is fun, fairly tense, if familiar hokum. Then in act of extreme pretension the film launches into another genre and becomes unintentionally funny and desperate. See it, for the gory deaths and performances. Skip it, if you don;t want your intelligence to be insulted.