I Know Who Killed Me -- 2007 -- R

When I saw the name of this film, I had just seen the trailer for The Invisible. I assumed that this film was going to be somewhat similar, but with the minor star power of Lindsay Lohan and an R rating attached. I assumed wrong.

Where The Invisible involved a ghost-like kid, this one has a girl who was kidnapped and mutilated, but when she shows back up, she thinks she is someone else entirely. She acts different; she talks different; it seems like she created an alter ego to deal with the trauma of her injury. Not only is there an alter ego, this alter ego has an entire history laid out in great detail. The stories have no inconsistencies. They know that she is the missing girl, but how to get through to her.

Meanwhile, our injured heroine deals with the idea that she is who everyone else says she is, not who she thinks she is. Regardless, she looks around for clues to her mutilator, and as the movie progresses, comes up with reasons why things happened and how it affects her. It’s enough to make David Lynch sing a bit with the number of turns her history takes, and given the setup, it works. After all, she’s the same person; she’s just lost her mind for a bit.

While somewhat interesting for a time, the plot grew quickly tiresome. You’re not yourself; we got it. No, instead the movie drives that point home over and over and over again, like a stake in the railroad tracks. Rather than spending time moving the investigation forward or exploring who she really is, we take continual trips back to her doing something out of character for the other one, or the obligatory "I need to create interest in the male populace" strip-club scenes, in which Lindsay Lohan dances...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And not just for a few seconds here and there. When we hit the club, we’re there forever...and nothing happens.

You can only watch Lindsay wiggle her butt for so long before you want the movie to move on...please? You can move on now. Yeah, go on.

Characters? Well, there was a basic sense of the lead character...characters? Lindsay’s Aubrey/Dakota characters had enough to make you wonder "what the heck?", but everyone else lacked severely. I didn’t even know the boyfriend was the boyfriend before he was declared as such later. She had friends...their names? I’m sure they were in the script. Her parents were Daniel and Susan. I got that because the Dakota character made a firm point of using them every time. Lots of cardboard cutouts though. Very little tie in to anything form anywhere.

The third act was out of no where. She leaves the house, but how? I thought she was watched. As soon as I wonder why she isn’t followed, Dad shows up. Convenient. Now he’s playing along. The killer was easily predicted. They didn’t even make it difficult. That whole bit was far too easy, although they pulled the stupid move of splitting up. Well, actually dad left her in the car (why?) while he explored, and then she randomly got out of the car and explored too.

Ending? Oh, dear, don’t get me started. Let me say when I watched the deleted scenes, and saw what was likely the INTENDED ending, it made much, much more sense, albeit taking the chance of making the audience feel cheated. The way the ending felt is that they wrote it one way, but when the studio heads saw it, they flipped out and wanted it changed to the more ambiguous, weird ending. Bad news fellas. Since the film built to the intended ending, the weird one didn’t work at all. The credits rolled and I said "huh?"

So this had the potential of being something interesting, but with the character sucked out, and a sorry ending that didn’t work, it only holds the potential without delivering it. Oh well.