good but could have been better

Rating: Null/10 (27 December 2003)

it's worth seeing and all, i just hoped for more. it had some very clever ideas, but they didn't spend enough time developing certain things. i'm not a fan of the script, but all in all it was very well-done and entertaining. now for some spoilers:
**spoilers**
it was pretty good, and then all of a sudden they throw that great twist in about cusak's character just being one of malcolm's personalities. i loved that scene, it was so good. i hadn't seen that coming at all. right then i got so excited about seeing the rest of the movie to see how they'd do what i thought was going to be the 2nd half. it turns out that that twist scene was very near to the end rather than in the middle. it makes me wish they had done more with that plot right there. or, they could have had the thing about discovering the twist about multiple personalities happen much earlier in the movie, and have more "that's impossible that that can happen" stuff happen before it, you know, stuff like the bodies disappearing and the keys appearing with the bodies.
for me, the indian burial ground crap was unnecessary, and the reference to agathe christie's "ten little indians" was unnecessary as well, and perhaps a little stupid. it was like how the movie "the recruit" made a big deal about the ice-nine reference from kurt vonnegut's "cat's cradle"--i just didn't like it.
i think it would have been really cool if there at the end, when liotta and cusak were shooting it out, if it turned out that as much as they tried to kill each other, it would just end up not working (getting shot multiple times, but still being alive), which would have only added a really cool effect to the whole "the motel isn't real" thing. that would've been so awesome.