A slasher-movie by any other name....

Rating: 4/10 (8 November 2005)

This film starts intriguingly as various people find themselves thrown together at a motel during a rainstorm. Interesting characters and the always charismatic John Cusack doing his thing. But then the killings start, character-development and relationships are set aside, and the film gradually goes gorily downhill to its' quite batty denouement and really ho-hum final 'shock' moment. But then I don't particularly like these sort of who's-doing-it films because I always get the feeling that it doesn't matter who is doing it, it is only a writers' contrivance. And this is more contrived than most, with the ludricous assumption that the State Governor would sit through a therapy session with a murderous lunatic the night before the mans' execution and then take the psychiatrists' word that the clearly demented man was now cured. Oh, come on, I thought -- and knew instantly how the film would end. Oh well. Cusack is always a pleasure -- and Amanda Peet, Ray Liotta and Jonn McGinley head an good cast....