I wanted so much more, this can't be it.

Rating: 6/10 (1 May 2003)

Very few times have I been more excited to see a film than I was to see Identity. With the healthy revival of the horror genre in the last few years, film makers have been doing it right more times than I can remember since the early 80's. I think The Ring has set the bar so high for so many films that now writers are trying to do the next great thing to scare the hell out of you. And every film has a shocking twist to it now a days as well. Think back to films like The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Fight Club and a few others and it seems that everyone is now trying to give us the next great twisted film. Whatever works I guess. The only danger of that mentality is that when you market a film like the way Identity was marketed, you better make sure that your twist pays off and doesn't make the audience feel cheated. I read Roger Ebert's review of The Usual Suspects and one of the reasons why he didn't like the film all too well is because he felt that the twist was so truculent, so brash and so unexpected that he felt cheated. There was no way that he could figure it out and he felt that the creators of the film didn't play fair with it's audience. While I do not agree with that assessment of The Usual Suspects, I do understand what he was complaining about because that is how I felt here. The twist is so unexpected, so convoluted and so unfair that when it did happen, I looked at my wife and said, "What the hell...are you serious?" And from that point on ( and there was still about 15 minutes left in the film), I just couldn't enjoy what I was watching. I just couldn't buy into what they were asking me to accept. Without giving away the film, a good comparison perhaps is to say that if you were told that your two best friends were in a fist fight and you had to stop them from hurting each other, but then found out that it was all spurious expose, would you really fear for their safety or would you watch with a crooked grin on your face?
Identity is a film that is blessed with a plethora of excellent horror film elements. You have ten strangers that all seem to have some sort of connection. It is a dark and stormy night and the small area in Nevada that they are in is going through a torrential storm. It is flooding the roads so that everyone has to take refuge at a dingy looking Batesesque looking motel. The film starts out beautifully with a terrible car accident that may have been triggered by one of the other patrons when she lost some of her luggage on the road which caused the flat tire and this caused the accident. Everyone seems to be meeting by suspiciously conspicuous circumstances. What they all have in common and why they are all here is the million dollar question.
Soon everyone is settled into the rooms but other eerie events just keep popping up all over the place. And then finally someone dies. And in a most heinous of ways. She has her head cut off and placed in a dryer. Pretty gruesome stuff. But what is the significance of everyone being here and why can't they get out? It is almost like they have been brought here by some mystical force and it is keeping them here. Radios don't work, cars won't start, the storm is flooding everything except the motel and to make matters worse, there is a psychotic prisoner chained to the bathroom wall in one of the rooms. Add to the story that they all share the same birthday, some strange names and the you now have one seriously confusing film. And that is where the films stops being suspenceful and confusing and it heads into the absurd.
There are enough red herrings introduced in the film as well to throw you off of the real deal but some of those red herrings would have made a more compelling story than they one that the writer's want us to believe. But what does keep the film flowing is the actors. With a film blessed with a cast that includes Amanda Peet, Ray Liotta and John Cusack, there is never a dull moment. Cusack carries the film and every second he is on screen he makes you listen. He has come such a long way from his days in films like Sixteen Candles and The Sure Thing. I have never seen him better than he is here.
But ultimately what transpires in the last half hour of the film is what put me off. That is not to say that it will put a typical viewer off the film off, it probably won't. I have talked to many people that saw the film and loved it. They liked the twist, they liked the outcome and they liked how it all played out. I can't really tell you why I didn't care for it, but I just didn't. And this is coming from a guy that loved the twist in Fight Club, Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects. Go figure. Maybe I didn't feel cheated in those films the way I felt cheated here.
6.5 out of 10
Maybe the best thing to do is just judge for yourself.