Twists for the sake of twists are wearing thin.

Rating: 1/10 (28 April 2003)

"Identity" is yet another movie that thinks a "SHOCKING TWIST" is better than a good narrative. I have had it up to here with movies that continue to play the ol' "pull the rug out from under the audience" trick when the ONLY purpose behind it is for the sake of the twist/shock itself.
"Identity" actually is quite good for about an hour. At one point, one of the characters even makes reference to "movies that gather strangers together and kill them off one by one only to find out later that there was some connection between them." Well, I WISH this movie would have gone with the formula instead of trying to outthink itself. The result is a major backfire and one of the worst final 20 minutes in film history. What genuine suspense there was for the first hour of the film completely vanished in the final 20 minutes.
I find myself constantly saying, "It's too bad the movie stunk because I really like John Cusack." Well guess what? I am tired of saying that and now feel compelled to say that Cusack the actor -- while talented -- is a terrible judge of what is a good movie and what isn't. How many bad movies is this recently for him?
Pretentious critics will embrace this stylish "exercise," but more intelligent and sophisticated film audiences will not be taken in by a movie that clearly had no idea what to do in the final act, other than to be different for the sake of being different.
Movies with great twists -- The Sting, The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense -- all had great screenplays that never cheated the audience and held up under scrutiny later. They also turned very very good screenplays into great screenplays. But movies that resort to twists just for the sake of them are doing their audience and themselves a great disservice. We and they (in some cases) deserve a lot better.