Great movie...if the obvious eludes you...

Rating: 5/10 (23 February 2006)

I had such high hopes for this movie and was so disappointed when I saw it that I have waited until now (two years later) to actually post a review. The only reason I am posting this review now is because I watched it on TV last night and though better than the first time around, it still was a terrible let down.
I saw this movie the first week it came out in the theaters in 2003 because it looked phenomenal. It wasn't...
The movie starts out well enough...there is a terrible storm and people after people, end up at this desolate motel in the middle of nowhere when the roads wash out and become flooded.
This could make for a great storyline you think. Murder? Suspense? I was ready to go! Too bad that excitement couldn't have lasted. Halfway through the movie was where it started to fall apart.
It becomes terribly predictable. The people in the rooms start dying. Well of course you think it's Jake Busey (as usual a fine actor when it comes to being a "bad guy") because he is Ray Liotta's prisoner.
No...wait, he ends up being killed too, only shortly after the murders start. Wait then...it has to be the creepy motel owner. No...it's not him either...all of a sudden everything about this movie has that "been there...seen it and am bored with it" feel.
Where was the originality that I had thought this movie would be infused with? It went right out the window along with the plot line.
Let me explain...
The actual focus of this movie is on Malcom Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince)...a mass murderer who is up for execution...until Dr. Malick (Alfred Molina) discovers that it's not Malcolm himself who is committing these horrid murders...it's his many and varied, multiple personalities! As the movie progresses, each person that "dies" is actually one of Malcolm's personas.
Now in itself that may not sound bad...kind of original actually. Someone who is mentally ill "curing" themselves by having their personas meet and kill each other off. But the manner in which it is done, leaves so much to be desired that it almost becomes comical. The idea was brilliant, and so much could have been done with it but the execution was awful...and halfway through the movie at that...
For all purposes, these people stranded in this motel think they are real people, with real lives. Yet, suddenly, all of the murdered bodies start disappearing and no one sees how. To anyone with any deductive reasoning powers, this is your first clue that this seemingly original plot starts trudging down the road of predictability.
Maybe this was supposed to be nail biting suspense, but it wasn't. It made absolutely no sense. How could someone clean up so much blood, dispose of a head (belonging to Rebecca DeMornay,) and cart away the large build of a man like John C. McGinley and no one see? From this point forward it is a desperate attempt to keep the watcher hooked and it reminds me of the second "Final Destination" movie...with one misplaced and pathetic event after another and none of it helps the movie except to bring it to its end...which didn't come soon enough.
The "kid persona" of Malcolm's, being the killer at the end, was just too much. How pathetically predictable. Let's see...this kid is creepy, he doesn't say much, looks kind of evil...
One does not require a degree in rocket science to start putting the numbers together.
Let me just say that other than a bang up performance by John Cusack, Liotta and a stellar performance by John C. McGinley as a manic man with far too many issues, this movie left nothing much else to be desired...
How very disappointing...