A top notch psycho-thriller

Rating: 9/10 (6 August 2018)

This is a film in which two seemingly unrelated stories run parallel. In one, we see an eleventh hour hearing where a psychiatrist tries to convince a judge to rescind a death penalty prior to the execution of a murderer. In the other, there are 11 people stranded in a highway motel in a stormy night and each one gets killed one after another in a mysterious and gory way. Considering the second story belongs to a very formulaic thriller which has been staged time and again, it would be naive to think that it makes up the core of the plot as the movie meanders along. There are enough number of twists and turns that will make your head spin. However, at the end you come to realize those twists are the essential elements of the plot and are not overly used as some viewers complain. There's also a very fine line between the annoying "everything was a dream" trick and psychoanalysis inside the murderer's mind. This causes polarized intelligent reviews that sway between love and hate. If you can see past "the dream" ploy you'll appreciate Identity as a well scripted, well directed and well acted movie which deserves the generally high marks it earns from the reviewers' ratings.