Before I get into the movie I will tell you what I find scary. Its not monsters, slashers, aliens, ghosts, zombies, demons, and general supernatural spookiness. The thing that scares me the most is what one seemingly normal person can do to another seemingly normal person and still be seemingly normal. "Identity" is not necessarily a good movie because it has many failings in its story. The direction by James Mangold is solid and the rest of the film serves as a good example of how to make a low budget film but elements of the story hold it back from being a great film about the nature of people, how fragile life is and how easily one person can take that fragile life away from another. Instead the movie is a who-done-it? in a single location with an eye-rolling reveal at the end. The movie is in an odd state of almost good. Meaning that it had plenty of potential and it was trying to do something interesting but it just didn't get there. I'm going to talk about the movie in more detail now. So... spoilers.
The story is about a man named Malcolm Rivers with dissociative identity disorder. He is also a serial killer and the entire movie hinges on finding out which of his 11 personalities is the killer. Sounds interesting. The way this is accomplished in the movies is the killer's psychiatrist (played by Alfred Molina) puts him on a plot device drug treatment to bring all his personalities together in one place in the mind of Rivers. This place is conceptualized as a motel in the middle of the Nevada desert during a storm that has washed out all the roads so that no one can leave. Also interesting. The main characters of the movie are the 11 personalities and the most interesting parts of the movie are when the characters are interacting with each other. All 11 personalities are fairly well fleshed out (even the first two to die have some amount of life to them) and in their interactions we get to see their prejudices, fears, failures, and flaws. Each one of them is hiding something and many of them have motives for murder. There are 10 deaths where the personalities are concerned and 5 of them happen off screen and they are the least interesting death in the movie. The really interesting deaths are the ones that we see. Because they are not committed by the movie's "killer" but by the other personalities.
I should probably tell you who the personalities are otherwise talking about their deaths in more detail will just get confusing. First off we are introduced to the "hotel manager" Larry (John Hawkes); the failing tv actress Caroline (Rebecca De Mornay); her limo driver who's also a former cop Ed (John Cusack); the York family, George (John McGinley) Alice, and their son Timmy; the newlyweds Ginny (Clea DuVall) and Lou; the call girl Paris (Amanda Peet); the convict pretending to be a cop Rhodes (Ray Liotta) and the other convict Robert (Jake Busey). Remember these names because I'm going to be tossing them around in a disjointed fashion later.
This is my big problem with the movie. Set aside the fact that a small child would not be able to cut off someone's head, shove a baseball bat down a grown man's throat, know anything about how to blow up a car, and do whatever he did to Lou to create that much of a mess. In the case of his parents, there were two many variables involved for me to believe that he was able to predict and cause the deaths of his parents. Let's start with the mother because the movie did. She is the first death to start but not the first one to resolve. The York family is driving down the road in the rain when the car bursts a tire. George gets out and discovers that a high heel shoe was the culprit as he pulls it from the flat tire and begins trying to fix the problem.
Variable one: Timmy's mom, Alice, gets out of the car to check on George's progress. What if she had stayed in the car? Variable two: Timmy gets Alice's attention to the back window where he was sitting and keeps her there for a moment. What if she didn't notice or interpreted his beckoning as a message to get back in the car because her son is scared? Variable three: She inexplicably backs a few steps from the window. What if she just didn't do that? Variable four: As Alice is still inexplicably stand a few steps back from the car she is hit by a speeding limo that is being driven by Ed with Caroline in tow. Caroline asked Ed to find a phone charger in her purse and he digs through it while driving in the rain. His attention is now on the purse so he doesn't see Alice standing in the road. Okay I have a lot of questions about this one. What if Caroline hadn't asked for Ed to look in her purse? What if her phone charge was fine? What if Ed tossed the purse in the back like a responsible driver and said "find it yourself?" What if Alice moved away from inexplicably standing in the middle of the road? There is no believable way the anyone could either know or control any of those variables that would fit within the context of the narrative.
The finale reveal shows that Timmy suffocated his mom by closing her mouth and blocking her nose while she lay weak and dying from being hit by the limo that Ed was driving. I give Alice's death to Ed because the kid directing the accident then finishing it later just doesn't work. He supposedly directed his father's death as well. This one was a little easier to swallow but there were still too many variables beyond the kid's control.
Variable one: Everyone thinks that Larry is the killer so he tries to drive off in his truck. (There was a lot leading up to that but if I list all the variables that Timmy couldn't have controlled or known that lead up to Larry as a suspect my fingers will fall off.) What if several events had not happened to lead anyone to that conclusion? What if Larry didn't take the truck but instead tried to kill everyone else? What if someone stopped him before he got to his truck? Variable two: Larry tries to drive off in his truck with Timmy timidly caught in the way. What if Rhodes, who had a gun, shot Larry causing him to veer off his path to hitting Timmy? What if Larry decided to stop the car as soon as he realized the driving off would mean running over a child? Variable three: George runs in the way, pushes Timmy aside, gets hit by the truck which drives straight into a large dumpster. What if Larry stopped as soon as he hit George instead of plowing him into a dumpster? What if George was in too much shock to jump to his son's aid?
There are just too many things that the child would need to know and do. He would need to be omniscient and telepathic to cause these effects and neither ability is even hinted at. In fact all the personalities exist in the mind of Rivers as real people. Timmy is no exception. There is also an element of the film where hotel keys are found on or near the bodies of the dead personalities in a descending order from ten in the order of the deaths. But noting comes of it except to set up a pay off at the end when Paris finds key number one which somehow ended up in Florida under the dirt where she was digging or tilling with the tool with which Timmy killed her. The key element does nothing for the story but the old set-up to punchline routine horror movie style. There is also a plot thread where the personalities learn that they all have the same birthday and they are all names after states in some form or fashion. This thread doesn't do much either except establish that all the personalities have some sort of connection.
Well this has run kind long. Much longer than I expected it too, so I'll cut it off here. Later this week we'll finish looking at "Identity" by exploring what it could have done to be really scary. See you later Friday. Hopefully.
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