The last act ruins what could have been a good film.

Rating: 4/10 (3 August 2014)

The Identity had a a lot of good things going for it and before I watched it I expected a good suspense/thriller film. First of all John Cusack was in this film and he always puts on good performances in the roles that he is given, he carried the above average horror flick 1408, and made it so much more entertaining and fun to watch with his enthusiastic performance. Identity had John Cusack and also had a large cast of other actors many of which I did not know of. But the basic plot at the premise of the whole film was very appealing. I was expecting something good in the very least.
Movie was going in the right direction, not only Cusack but rest of the cast performed well, and the settings and environments seemed appealing and the film was only getting better by the minute, until the last 1/4 portion of the movie where the big twist was revealed.
Now don't get me wrong twists are not bad, sometimes they up the status of the film and may make you come back for a second viewing, leave you shocked and leave room for interpretations. Another psychological horror/thriller Sixth Sense had a great twist; another suspense/thriller film like Usual Suspects had a great twist. The Others a horror film also had a great twist. But this film goes with the terrible it was all a dream concept which ruins all the interesting characters this film was trying to make us care about throughout most of the it. This Dream concept can work if executed right but here this concept ruins everything. We come to the realization that it all in the head of a mentally unstable serial killer who has multiple personalities in his brain, each of which is portrayed by the characters in the movie, the serial killer personality is the killing off the other characters (personalities) which represent something good in the killer or a softer side to him.
I don't see this as an intelligent concept because it's premise is flawed from the start, personalities co-exist in the brain they don't try to kill each other off as portrayed in the movie, neither they are numbered in a specific order as portrayed in the movie. I thought the film was heading somewhere interesting when we found out all characters had the same birth date and had last names of countries or cities, but apparently all this was to present them as a personality in a psychopath's head.
Plus it's laughable who turns out to be the killer/evil personality at the end. We do agree to suspend our disbelief to a point when watching film but this is just unbelievable, I guess they just wanted to SHOCK us by revealing the kid as the killer, they decided to make the whole scenario take place in a psychopath's head to pass off the possibility of the kid as a killer just to SHOCK us. I wrote off the kid as a suspect the second I saw him just like anyone would, because which movie is ridiculous enough to portray a little child as a Serial Killer? I don't see how is this intelligent in anyway, it is nonsensical, ruins the characters and ruins the suspense the movie had. Why should we care Cusack's character left his police job, why should we care about the Detective being a prisoner disguised as a cop, why care about the problems the couple was having , why care about that women's condition after the car accident. Why should we care about a psychopath guy who appears for like 5 minutes in the movie and what happens in his head and why should we care about what is happening in the head of a serial killer in the first place. Why care about anything at all. This twist ruins the whole thing and reveals that caring about anything related to the backstory of the characters is pointless and is not real and represents something in the psychopath's head.
Overall, Identity had a good basic premise, good performances and a good setting , and was only getting better but it will all ruined by the film's twist, which ruins everything this film established in its first half.
Overall Rating: 4/10.