Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 24, 2003, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Itโs easy to discuss whatโs right with Identity, and very difficult to explain whatโs wrong with itโat least, without blowing the surprise. As long as the movie is concerned with the struggles of its group of stranded travelers to figure out whoโs bumping them off one by one and to escape being next, it maintains a constant and palpable tension. Itโs when the film attempts to explain its murderous events that it runs into trouble.
The best thing about Identity is the solid cast of character actors and B-list stars portraying the people who wind up stuck at an isolated Nevada motel on a prototypical dark and stormy night. After some tricky/trendy juggling of the time sequence to show how their destinies became intertwined, everyone settles in to wait out the stormโuntil a bitchy actress (played by an unrecognizable Rebecca DeMornay) goes missing, and the rest discover that a convicted killer (Jake Busey) being transported by cop Ray Liotta has escaped from the room where he was handcuffed, andโฆ
Director James Mangold and writer Michael Cooney have constructed the movie as a chess game, rather than a character piece; who these people are is not as important as how they react and move about within the scenario. (When limo driver John Cusack and call girl Amanda Peet stop for monologues that reveal their backstories, it almost feels out of place.) Yet Cooney has done a deft job of sketching these individuals, Mangold handles the suspense mechanics well (Phedon Papamichaelโs moody lighting and production designer Mark Friedbergโs completely convincing sets are also assets) and each actor fleshes out his or her role with conviction. The ensemble also includes John C. McGinley as a nebbish whose wife (Leila Kenzle) has been badly injured in an auto accident, burgeoning genre veteran Clea DuVall and William Lee Scott as a tense pair of newlyweds and John (From Dusk Till Dawn) Hawkes, whoโs a ton of fun as the motelโs skeevy manager.
Although Identity has the sequential-murder scenario of any number of slasher films, the specifics of the killings arenโt the point, and most of the deaths occur offscreen, with the bodies discovered later. (The most discomfiting of KNB EFXโs work involves the stitching up of Kenzleโs characterโs neck wound.) The movieโs true point, as has been made clear in the trailer and commercials, is that thereโs a shared connection between all these people, one that explains how theyโve come to be at the motel at the same time and why theyโre being exterminated. Framing scenes in which a doctor (Alfred Molina) prepares to argue the sanityโor lack thereofโof a convicted murderer suggest that thereโs more going on than meets the eye, and Mangold and Cooney spring the explanation on us earlier than expected, at about the hour mark.
And it is exactly its placement before the main action has run its course that upsets the filmโs suspense. Not because there are no surprises leftโin fact, it is followed by an effective twist regarding one of its protagonists, and another whammy at the very endโbut because of the way it throws the entire story into new relief. Some may find the revelation a cheat, and others may see it coming; personally, I found it a pretty interesting idea on a thematic level. The problem is, for reasons I canโt get into without venturing into spoiler territory, the playing of this narrative card destroys any identification with the remaining characters, and renders what happens to them dramatically moot. Just when the movie should really be cranking up the audience involvement, it instead tells them that what theyโve invested in is, in many ways, a red herring.
Thereโs also a randomness to what follows that negates some of Mangold and Cooneyโs carefully constructed suspense, and the impact of the final twist is blunted because by that point, itโs pretty much the only surprise the movie could have left to throw at us. (It also leaves the nagging question of how the person involved could have possibly done everything that he or she did.) In these days of increasingly simplistic movie storytelling, one hates to criticize a film for having too much plot, but the makers of Identity ultimately undo themselves by tying up their story in too many narrative knots.
