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| A young woman (Lindsay Lohan) is targeted by a serial killer. |
Release Date: July 27, 2007. Running Time: 106 minutes. Written by: Jeff Hammond. Producers: Frank Mancuso Jr., David Grace. Director: Chris Sivertson.
THE PLOT:
Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan) is a young college student who comes from a good family and who has good prospects. A onetime potential piano prodigy, she has recently ended her lessons in order to focus on her passion for writing.
Then the unthinkable happens: Aubrey is captured by a serial killer who spent weeks torturing his last victim, literally taking the girl apart before finally killing her. The FBI descends on the usually quiet suburb of New Salem, but there seems little hope that they will find Aubrey alive.
Except that she is found. A motorist discovers her at the side of a country road, and she's taken to New Salem's hospital. She is missing both a hand and a leg, but she is very much alive. When she wakes, however, she does not recognize her parents (Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough). She also insists that she isn't the privileged Aubrey, but another woman from a more troubled background named Dakota Moss.
The FBI and her parents assume that she's retreated into a fantasy to deal with her trauma. But though she's coarser than Aubrey, Dakota seems entirely coherent. With it becoming ever clearer that the police will not believe her, she decides to do her own investigation, to understand what happened to her and to save Aubrey - assuming it isn't already too late!
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| Neal McDonough and Julia Ormond play Aubrey's parents. Neither actor is sorely taxed. |
CHARACTERS:
Aubrey/Dakota: Lindsay Lohan won a Worst Actress Razzie, because the Razzies remain stubbornly unable to differentiate a performance from the quality of the film that it's in. The biggest criticism I could make is that Lohan does little to differentiate the Aubrey and Dakota personas. But her acting is never less than serviceable, and she has several good individual moments, particularly when playing fear or anger. It's probably damning with faint praise, but I'd actually label her as this movie's strongest asset.
Susan: Aubrey's mother tries to be supportive, even indulging what she's certain is just her daughter's fantasy persona. She's so insistent on letting Aubrey/Dakota work through her trauma that she doesn't interfere when Dakota sleeps with Aubrey's boyfriend. This prompts an amusing scene in which Susan focuses manically on cleaning while the youngsters have noisy sex upstairs (sidebar: Noisy sex while a parent is in the house? Surely both parties would focus on being as quiet as possible). Outside of that, Julia Ormond is given so little to do that I'm not sure why the producers bothered hiring a name actress.
Daniel: Aubrey's father, who is deeply concerned about his daughter's welfare but who also hides a secret. That is not a spoiler, as: (a) He is framed as a semi-sinister figure in the background of several shots; and (b) he is played by Neal McDonough. Sure, you could cast McDonough as an upper middle-class nice guy with nothing to hide, just as you could cast James Spader as a mute... but in both cases, why would you? He at least gets more to do than Julia Ormond, though I wouldn't say that he's particularly taxed.
Agents Bascome and Lazarus: Bascome (Garcelle Beauvais) and Lazarus (Spencer Garrett) ally with the local sheriff (Donovan Scott), who in no way resembles a uniformed Santa Claus, to form a crack investigative unit. When Aubrey disappears, they hop into action: sticking photos of her up in the local church, drinking coffee with furrowed brows, and... honestly, not much else. After she turns up as Dakota, they understandably don't believe her story about being a totally different person. Less understandable is that they don't even bother checking to see if she worked at the strip club where she's been employed, something that could be checked with a single phone call. I guess that coffee's not going to drink itself...
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| The crack investigative unit: Agents Lazarus (Spencer Garrett) and Bascome (Garcelle Beauvais), joined by Sheriff Santa Claus (Donovan Scott). |
"SAY SOMETHING NICE":
This is not a good movie, but it's a surprisingly watchable one. Once I plowed through the (dreadful) opening Act, I was surprised by how caught up I got in the silliness. I even caught myself leaning forward in my seat during some of the suspenseful moments. I wouldn't exactly recommend it... but if I stumbled across this while flipping through channels at 2 AM, I would probably end up watching the whole thing.
THOUGHTS:
I Know Who Killed Me has gone on a bizarre post-release journey. In 2007, it bombed at the box office and earned all but universally terrible reviews, with some critics ranking it among the worst movies ever made... which it really, really isn't. These days, it seems to have undergone something of a re-evaluation, with some overcorrecting to the point of calling it good... which it also definitely isn't.
The story just about holds together within the confines of what passes for narrative logic. The killer is shown early on, so that person's identity is not a cheat (in fact, guessing the villain is downright easy). At only 106 minutes, it never feels stretched out. The actors are all competent performers, and they do their level best to deliver their cardboard dialogue with conviction. Not only wouldn't I rank it as one of the worst movies ever made; I wouldn't even call it the worst movie I've seen this week!
This is far from being a misunderstood gem, though. Yes, the heavy-handed use of color and somewhat wacky overall tone may be trying to evoke filmmakers like David Lynch or Dario Argento. There's more than a sprinkle of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and Suspiria in the mix. But, not to put too fine a point on it, those titles were... well, good.
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| There's a red and blue color scheme at work. You might miss it because it's so very subtle... |
I've already mentioned the bad dialogue. Add to that, when Dakota finally begins to investigate, her amateur sleuthing consists of poking around another victim's bedroom, badgering Aubrey's father, and then visiting a cemetery. Fortunately for her, clues have been neatly laid out for her at every stop. Otherwise, her detective work is barely any better thought out than the FBI agents'.
Speaking of the FBI subplot, everything about that is poor. Agent Intense Coffee Drinker, Agent Talk to the Hand, and Sheriff Santa Claus are given hefty amounts of screen time. The sheriff (correctly) scoffs at labeling the first crime a serial killing, given that there's only been one victim... but everyone is happy to label this a serial killer once Aubrey is kidnapped.
After Dakota turns up, the investigators debate whether she is delusional or simply lying. After that, they just... stop being in the movie. We don't so much as hear police sirens in the background during the final confrontation with the (sort of) serial killer. For all of their prominence in the first hour, they end up contributing less to the story than the tech who gives Dakota her prosthetics, and who is glimpsed for a grand total of one scene.
The film editing is remarkably bad. There are multiple moments in which expressions and even physical positions do not match from one shot to the next. Early in the film, Aubrey flirts with a random guy. She has a serious expression in one shot. Then she's grinning in the next shot as he takes his shirt off. Then the film returns to the first angle, and her expression is serious again. Later, when she's talking to the crack investigative idiots, her posture and hand position change between cuts. I could just about excuse this in a micro-budget indie - except this was a mid-budget studio film!
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| The killer seals Aubrey inside a glass coffin. |
THE OTHER NOMINEES:
I haven't seen any of I Know Who Killed Me's rivals for Worst Picture, but most of them sound like they're probably less entertaining than this one.
Bratz: This is a teen movie based on a doll line. That works when Greta Gerwig's the director and the result is Barbie, but it otherwise sounds like a pitch that should have resulted not in a green light but in a call to security and a restraining order. Oh, and Jon Voight's in yet another Worst Picture nominee. Remember when him being in a movie was a good thing?
Daddy Day Camp: Cuba Gooding Jr. replaces Eddie Murphy for this ill-advised sequel to Daddy Day Care. I had honestly believed this was direct-to-DVD, but it apparently did get a (very brief) theatrical release. I'd say Murphy had better things to do, if not for...
Norbit: Eddie Murphy would probably have been better off making Daddy Day Camp. Murphy once again plays multiple roles, something I believe was last funny in Coming to America. Almost 20 years earlier. Oh, and Marlon Wayans is in it, which has never been a good thing for any movie.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry: Adam Sandler and Kevin James are two firefighters who become domestic partners-on-paper for financial reasons. Then they have to keep up the act to try to wring laughs out of a premise that was tired when Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt did it as a buddy cop movie in Partners. In 1982. The film performed passably at the box office, and it did quite well on home video... but the Razzies hate Adam Sandler almost as reflexively as they hate Sylvester Stallone, so its nomination was a given. It's probably bad, but I doubt it's any worse than a lot of other Sandler flicks.
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| Lindsay Lohan's R-rated Parent Trap sequel ends up being really strange... |
OVERALL:
I Know Who Killed Me is not in any way a good movie. The main character's investigation barely qualifies as one, seeming to lead to a solution more through luck than anything. The dialogue ranges from merely wooden to outright terrible. The editing is often incompetent. Oh, and the whole thing looks much cheaper than its $12 million budget would indicate.
Still, it's far from the all-time disaster contemporary reviews made it out to be. It moves along, at least, and the acting is frankly better than the script deserves. Lindsay Lohan's offscreen self-destruction dominated headlines and likely contributed to its hostile reception - but I actually give her credit that her actual acting was entirely adequate to the material.
I wouldn't have sought this film out if not for this review series, but this is the first Razzie winner in a while that I ended up enjoying - albeit probably not in the way the filmmakers had intended.
Rating: Raspberry.
Worst Picture - 2006: Basic Instinct 2
Worst Picture - 2008: The Love Guru (not yet reviewed)
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