Review: Identity (2003)

Identity

IMDB rate: 7,3

Genre: Thriller

You have no idea how long I've wanted to watch this movie already. Every time I forgot about it unfortunately, but now it became available on Netflix, so finally I could watch it. At the beginning of the movie I wasn't too sure about it, it seemed kinda standard. 

Strangers from all different walks of life: a limo driver escorting a fading television star, parents with a young son whose marriage is in crisis, a cop transporting a dangerous convict, a beautiful call girl, a couple of young newlyweds, and a nervous motel manager are caught up in a severe rainstorm, stuck at a motel in desolate Nevada. Soon they realize they may be at the motel for another reason when one by one, people start getting killed off. As tensions flare and fingers are pointed, they have to get to the bottom of why they're there. Meanwhile in an undisclosed location, a psychiatrist is trying to prove the innocence of a man accused of murder in an eleventh hour trial. 

Let's start talking about the acting. I have to admit that this bunch of actors are definitely not in my top 100 of favorite actors, but in this movie they weren't all too bad. John Cusack for example, I really dislike him as an actor. He plays the same type of characters over and over again, it's getting a bit boring really. But well, in this movie he was quite alright. Then we have Ray Liotta, again, I'm not a big fan of him. He always plays some sort of bad guy, just not very surprising to be honest. In this movie his character wasn't very different from his previous roles, but well it was acceptable in this movie I think. I wasn't too annoyed by it. John C. McGingley also plays a part in this movie. Damn, how much I hate that guy, and to be honest, it's mostly because of this role in Scrubs. He's just annoying and he was one of the few that wasn't very good in this movie. Then there's Clea Duvall, and I'm 100% sure that this is her most annoying role ever, really, she's quite a stupid hypocrite crying whining bitch in Identity. 

While following this kinda standard storyline we also watch some guy who was sentenced to death and at first it seems kinda random. As if he was the killer or something. Sometimes his parts were even annoying because the 'motel-storyline' was so tensive. It's actually rather quick that we find out that he does have something to do with all this, luckily. 

Now beware, there are a few spoilers ahead! When we finally think that we know who the killer is, something big happens. We switch back to the convicted guy who is apparently Ed. Now how is this possible, since he looks nothing like him? Apparently the convinced guy had multi personality disorder and creates each character of the motel in his head. So basically, he's all of them at some point, but we watch it from Ed's view. The motel thing never happened actually, it's all some process that the convicted guy goes through to kill each one of his personalities. At the end each one of his personalities is killed off besides the girl, but she wasn't the killer so the convicted guy proved that the killer inside him was murdered, which made him more stable again. This was all to save the convicted guy from death penalty, and inside his head he lives further as the girl. But then, a small plot twist happens... 

I thought this storyline was very interesting. It had lot of twists that I really didn't expect at the beginning of the movie. I expected some sort of standard motel slaughter movie, such as Vacancy or something like it. At some points it even reminded me of 1408. It's really a good and surprising movie I think. Good acting and a great surprising end.

My personal rate: 7,5/10