Smart B-Movie Thriller

Rating: 8/10 (4 February 2006)

As the norm, B-movies have a certain freedom to show on-screen what big-name productions shy away from, and thanks to this, they can retain a near 100 percent truthfulness to what they're trying to tell. IDENTITY, an effective little movie that became the sleeper hit of the first third of 2003 is one of those clever stories. Taking a cue from Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians", one of the few of her stories which have failed to make an impression on the big screen, director James Mangold and screenwriter Michael Cooney bring forth this apparently predictable but surprising slasher-thriller about ten strangers, neither of them related to each other, who during a heavy storm converge in an out-of-the-way motel in the middle of nowhere. That it becomes evident that there is more to every one of these people than first value would suggest is just the icing on the cake. When they start getting picked off one by one, paranoia sets in and the remaining survivors try to uncover the killer's identity.
Waving in an out of this suspenseful story is the tense battle between a psychologist trying to save his patient from certain death. It becomes known to us that he's a mass murderer, and a former cop, but to talk more about this would be 'murder' to anyone who hasn't seen this clever story. More so because there is a crucial plot point which ties both the events in the motel and the inquisition. As a matter of fact, much of IDENTITY occurs in a deceptive non-linear way. The manner as to how the main players are introduced, with the actions of one affecting the course of action of the other, going back and forth before getting into the meat of the plot, is downright tight.
Mangold is one of the newer directors whom I'm getting acquainted with and in the process, enjoying his work. His rendition to the slasher genre is hard to classify at times because a lot of the movie is an intense character piece where every one of his players are people instead of plot-types (while initially appearing so). Having a large roster of big names and lesser-known names helps, too, because it misdirects the viewer into believing that an actor known for playing a certain type of role will repeat a performance here, but Mangold is looking for something else aside from entertaining. It seems to me that his intentions are to twist a well-known genre and take it to an unexpected ground without cheating his audience a la M. Night Shyamalan. And because all the little giveaways are there, cleverly hidden in their plain exposure, no one can say he cheated for shock value. I loved IDENTITY, with its dark colors and late-night horror movie values, and can't say there wasn't a moment when an actor didn't nail his or her presence.