Identity Cleft

Rating: 7/10 (29 July 2005)

More than a murder mystery. More than a psychological thriller. More than a horror movie.
With most viewers being either misled by the similarities to Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians", or just pompously broadcasting their knowledge that this movie was inspired by such, they seem to have missed the point that this was not a "murder mystery" per se, but rather, a finely-crafted journey through the mind of a multiple personality during the course of purging his violent personas.
I believe that premise (and its attendant "twists") were a TEENSY bit much for audiences to comprehend. Even taking into account the fact that film-makers construct films of this ilk to the whims of "test-audiences" and "focus groups", (read as lowest common denominators, i.e. swineherders), this particular case still elicits misunderstanding, even WITH the kindergarten paint-by-numbers explanation in the final minutes.
It seemed to be a Patrick-Duffy-shower-scene cop-out, but director James Mangold and writer Michael Cooney, were using sleight-of-hand to misdirect viewers through most of the film.
I envision those loose-lipped test-audiences (comprised of societal castes who have nothing better to do with their Tuesday afternoons) believing that the movie was taking place in real time, only to be chagrined when it is revealed that most of the action was occurring in a psychopath's disturbed mind. Instead of appreciating WHY this filmic device was used, they immediately wished they'd spent their Tuesday afternoon downing that Haagen-Daaz tub and watching McMillan & Wife explain every last G-rated detail to them like they were the last retards on earth.
Ten guests are flood-stranded at a Motel: among them, Rebecca deMornay, almost unrecognizable with her ample boob-job and burgundy hair, playing a character whom she is assuming the mantle of with each passing botox-ed day - a woman who "used to be that actress"; Amanda Peet, whose stage direction was kept simple - "Back that booty up some more, honey!"; John C. McGinley playing against type as an uber-dweeb, Jake Busey playing *exactly* his type  uber-psycho; Ray Liotta  always darkly mysterious One by one, these refugee guests start dying all Agatha-Christie-like.
Intercut with this storyline is a somber eleventh-hour appeal by doctors and lawyers to an ill-tempered judge to stay an execution. We are intrigued as to how these two disparate tales are related, but we DO sense a connection in due course, because the dry, somber doctors are talking about a "killer" and in that wet parallel Motel story there're KILLIN'S GALORE.
By the end of the second act (after the film's most neck-hair-raising moment, when all the corpses at the Motel are found to be missing), it is revealed that the Motel scenes have been taking place within a psychopath's mind, and that each Motel character was merely one of the multiple personalities of the psychopath.
That's Twist No.1  that all this rain-drenched piling in and out of rooms like the Spanish Inquisition with shocked pusses is merely a psychopath's IMAGINATION.
For a few moments we are led to believe the Shyamalan trap has been sprung  but there's a trump card  through Grand Misdirection on the film-maker's part, the doctors believe they successfully purge the psychopath's mind of his "killer" persona, but it is revealed in the last few seconds of film that the psychopath was too adroit in concealing his *real* "killer" persona in the form of the least likely hotel guest.
THAT was the true "twist" to the movie: discovering that the doctors' cure did not go deep enough; discovering that the psychopath was able to disguise his persona as a benign presence in full view of both the viewers and doctors.
The movie could have opted to wrap neatly with the first Twist, or could have taken any number of juvenile turns, blaming spirits from an Indian Burial Ground, or any of the lesser characters (who all sported damaging secrets), but the writers led us on a merrier, more interesting goose chase.
Thus, this deponent sayeth: Bravo to the road less traveled.
On the other hand, my "feminine personality" thought the movie brutalized women too overtly and my "killer psychopath" personality is going to make the film-makers pay for giving away my secrets...
(Movie Maniacs, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com)