Eric D. Snider
I Know Who Killed Me
Movie Review
"I Know Who Killed Me"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: D
Rating: R
Released: Friday, July 27, 2007
Directed by:
Cast:
When some mystery thrillers reveal their secrets at the end, you say, "Aaaahh," in a mix of surprise and satisfaction. When "I Know Who Killed Me" unveils everything, you say, "What? Are you serious? That's stupid."
I have to assume that this was not the filmmakers' intention.
Lurid, over-sexualized, and boring when it's not being actively unpleasant, "I Know Who Killed Me" stars Lindsay Lohan as Aubrey Fleming, a talented high school senior with a football player boyfriend (Brian Geraghty) and a scholarship to Yale. She writes fiction and plays the piano, both allegedly with great skill, though the examples we're shown aren't very impressive.
Aubrey goes missing one night after a football victory, and the town fears she may have been abducted by the same maniac responsible for several other girls' disappearances in recent months. Sure enough, we see Aubrey as she's strapped to a table, drugged up, and subjected to a painful-looking removal of the fingers on one hand. Her piano-playing days are over!
Next thing she knows, she's in the hospital. Her right leg and hand are gone. Oh, and she has no idea who "Aubrey Fleming" is. She says her name is Dakota Moss, that she's a stripper (obviously; if your name is Dakota Moss, you have no choice but to become a stripper), and that she was raised by a crack-addicted mother in some dirtbag town elsewhere in the state. Aubrey's parents (Julia Ormond and Neal McDonough) seem nice enough, she says, but they ain't hers. Hers are dead.
Naturally, this puts everyone in a bit of a dither. The psychiatrist (Gregory Itzin) thinks Aubrey is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The FBI agents (Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon and Spencer Garrett) are annoyed that Aubrey, or Dakota, or whoever she is can't -- or won't -- give them more details on what happened to her and who her captor was. How did she escape when all of the guy's other victims were never found alive?
If Aubrey's faking it, she's doing a convincing job. Whereas Aubrey was holding out on sleeping with the football player boyfriend, Dakota jumps right into the sack with him, upstairs in Aubrey's bedroom while Aubrey's mother stands helpless in the kitchen. If you think the lad will be concerned about his sexual partner's missing limbs, then you underestimate the horniness of a teenage boy.
The film's director, Chris Sivertson, seems to consider himself clever for having discovered that you can use colors to distinguish different types of scenes. All the scenes involving Aubrey are heavy on the blues. When Dakota tells us her story, we're shown flashbacks full of reds. This is a fine thing to do when you're making a movie with themes and messages and subtleties. When you're making a movie about a girl whose hand and leg got chopped off by a madman, and who now has a split personality that swears and smokes and sleeps around, then I posit that using colors to differentiate moods is probably a wasted effort.
Even less serviceable is Jeff Hammond's clunky screenplay, which has huge spaces of time where no new information is revealed, leaving us to sit around and wait for something to happen. When things finally do unfold and the mystery of Aubrey/Dakota is explained, you're liable to feel like you've been had. Can this possibly have been what they had in mind the whole time? Yes, apparently: All the clues lead up to it. Can someone have thought it was a good idea for a movie, and that the conclusion would work? Yes, apparently.
Grade: D
Rated R, a lot of harsh profanity, some strong sexuality, brief glimpses of naked lady boobs (not Lindsay's), a lot of grisly violence
1 hr., 45 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 14 comments
July 30, 2007 at 8:09 am
The whole time I was watching it, I kept thinking "I've seen this plot before on Cinemax or HBO at 2am, except it probably had Shannon Tweed in it". It's about that level.
However, personally I give it a pass. Not only did I discover that I find Lindsay's freckled shoulders fascinating, a good thing to know about oneself, the movie also gives me the opportunity to use a word that (perhaps fortunately) doesn't get enough play. That word is "tawdry".
July 30, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Yo, Eric: I'm never going to see the movie. No one else is either. Or, if they are, they've already seen it. Just spoil the dang ending. What's the big secret?
July 30, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I was disappointed by the mildness of this movie review. When I saw the "D" rating I raised my fist in excitement as I was expecting the film to be torn limb from limb. The review's tone was more like what I'd expect from a "C" level movie.
July 30, 2007 at 1:46 pm
If you want to know the secret go to www.themoviespoiler.com
And yeah, if they are correct, it's just dumb. Nobody thought of it before because nobody else is dumb enough to use it as a premise for a movie (at least no movie I've ever seen).
July 30, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Is it bad that I figured out the secret issue of the story (well, minus the finer details) just upon watching the trailer? I'm not good at guessing these things typically, so how good a movie could it possibly be with a guessable secret like that?
July 31, 2007 at 12:27 am
http://moviepooper.com is another good spoiler site. It just plainly states the ending w/o detailing the the whole movie. *** spoiler*** & for supposedly 2 different people, the Lindsays achieved the exact same shade of orange tan.. amazing!
August 1, 2007 at 11:02 am
It wasen't a great movie, I've seen movies with the same premise and i don't wanna give any spoilers away but.. are you sure you got the movie? From your review it dosen't seem like you understand what was really going on. It dosen't come right out and say it.
And oh my god I just went and read the spoiler from that website and they didn't get it either.
Think of it like this, what happens when you as a person are in shock. What does your body do to help you get rid of the pain. She's being forced awake but the body will fight it. That being said I hope you get a chance to see it again and pay close attention to all the stuff being said.
August 1, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Yeah, Eric! This is a movie that deserves careful and lengthy study!
August 1, 2007 at 12:42 pm
After reading the spoiler for the movie, I can safely say that this movie doesn't desreve a D. If anything, the D is too generous, the twist ending is just painfully dumb.
August 1, 2007 at 5:26 pm
One of the characters played by LiLo (as the tabloids have taken to calling their little darling) is a sweet, innocent freckled miss who has talent and a bright future ahead of her.
Then something happens.
The other character played by poor Linds is a smoking, drinking, drugging party girl with gobs of personal problems who seems doomed to crash and burn.
When in the heck will those casting directors stop miscasting their lead roles, and bring in somebody BELIEVABLE, fer gosh sakes?!?
August 21, 2007 at 9:48 am
Why is that movies can NEVER write a believable novel/poem/script inside the movie? I think of that horrible movie "Alex and Emma" all based on someone writing what may have been the worst book ever.
November 5, 2007 at 1:15 am
[SPOILERZ] What u mean, u sayin that it's not believable? anyhow, this is how i understood it. The whole thing that beem goin on might have been her imagination. It might've not been the real thing u know. So it's rly possible that she was lyin down der buried alive, and while she was still alive that thing like she's dacota from de stories she wrote while bein livin the normal life. So basically, she was almost dead in de coffin, and most part of the movie where she is dacota it's goin on in her imagination not in the real life. THe killa might have not even been the piano prof, but some1 else, and the moment when they are like lyin togeza, de dyin audrey and dacota. both of em aint just lying der takin a nap, audrey finally got in her mind and finally found her other half and came back to reality, basically audrey neva came back to her parents, it was dacota which is audrey's imagination. And the moment dacota get audrey out of ground, audrey dies. She never makes it, she never gets out.
December 5, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Ya, um, Stephen it would be great if you would write something that people actually understand...is it really that hard to write "the" instead of "de"? I know it's hard tryin to act like a gangsta when you're not one so here is a tip....you're only supposed to TALK like that, not type like that
June 11, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I just watched this movie last night because I knew it would be stupid and I wanted something to laugh at. It's an awesomely stupid and badly done movie, and anyone who thinks this movie is intelligent, artistic, deep, etc. must be completely unaware of the films that actually are intelligent, clever, artistic, etc.