Movie Reviews

There's a lot that I really liked about Identity. For the most part, it's an intelligent, taut, and atmospheric thriller with a really cool set up. A group of disparate strangers find themselves stranded at a run-down motel in the middle of nowhere on a dark and stormy night. One by one, however, a bunch of them end up murdered and mutilated. A former cop named Ed (John Cusack) -- who's now a limo driver -- and an active policeman named Rhodes (Ray Liotta) team up uneasily to try to uncover the murderer, but without much success.

The set-up is really neat. It's almost 'Hitchcockian', the situation that these strangers find themselves in. There's a murderer out there, but what seems to drive the story is more the power-struggles and differences that show up in the group of complete strangers, forced to try to work together for their survival.

On the basis of this, I have to say I really enjoyed most of the movie. However, there's a twist near the end that kind of spoiled it for me. The ending reminded me a little of Vanilla Sky in that the twist almost deems irrelevant everything that occures before it (don't worry, I'm not giving anything away here -- Identity is nothing at all like Vanilla Sky). It seemed clever right after watching it, but it hasn't sit very well with me since.

Identity is worth seeing though. In a way, it's probably the most "grown-up" "unknown-murderer-stalking-a-group-of-people" whodunit-movie I've seen.