I Know Who Killed Me Bilingual

 

 

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I'm a pretty easy-going person, so I'm not super frustrated that the DVD I purchased skipped a few scenes, and had trouble loading. Other than that, speedy shipping(before the estimated date), cheap price.

It is difficult and probably pointless to watch "I Know Who Killed Me" and not think about all of Lindsay Lohan's personal problems this past year. When the DVD was loading and the obligatory boilerplate warning about the commentary track came up my mind immediately started a riff about Lohan doing such a track, wailing and moaning about how everybody is out to get her and wondering why nobody likes her. The movie cost $12 million to make and grossed $7 million, but even though pretty much nobody went to the theater to see it last summer I am sure the studio will make back its money on those of us who rent it just to see the final nail in Lohan's acting career (maybe not forever, but at least for the foreseeable future). I have the nasty suspicion that more people who hate Lohan will buy a copy of "I Know Who Killed Me" than will her fans.

Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, a budding pianist and high school student who disappears after a football game. Several young women have been abducted from the area lately and the police suspect a sadistic serial killer who has been maiming his victims, which worries Aubrey's parents (Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough), and her boyfriend, Jerrod (Brian Geraghty). The opening act of the movie fast forwards what would be your basic torture porn horror film to get to the point where Aubrey is found, but when she wakes up in the hospital and is confronted with the extent of her mutilation, she insists she her name is Dakota Moss (a poorly chosen name since it invites comparisons to both Dakota Fanning and Kate Moss that do nothing for Lohan). I find this to be a rather interesting premise, to have a victim so traumatized by what has happen to them that they take refuge in another persona. But this 2007 film wants to play with the idea that there is another explanation for what is going on here; in fact, it offers a couple of different hypotheses.

Lohan's performance is pretty bad, which I think has to do with the fact that she is badly miscast here. This film is also hurt by the scenes of Dakota as an exotic dancer because there is no nudity and the eroticism displayed by Lohan at the club is less than you would expect form a made for TV movie. This ain't Demi Moore embracing her role in "Striptease," that is for sure. By the time Dakota shows up for a pole dance with nipples painted on her bustier, I was wondering if maybe the point is not that this is bad girl Dakota dancing but good girl Aubrey's simplistic idea of what dancing at a strip club is like. The film's sex scene is quite bizarre for several reasons (e.g., the comic counterpoint with the mom cleaning the kitchen sink), but the paradoxical nature of sex in this film comes up again as her character keeps her bra on for most of it (something that is quickly becoming a cliche in movies). I find this ironic, because I would double down on a bet that the next time Lohan appears on film she is going to have to do actual nudity because her next offer will be an exploitation film that fames this one look like classic cinema (i.e., yeah, it can get worse, Lindsay, a whole lot worse).

The torture porn scenes are disquieting, but ultimately wrong for this movie, which needed to be done more in the Hitchock tradition than that of Eli Roth or whoever Chris Sivertson is trying to emulate. Even then, I am not sure if that would work for a film that really is an exploitation film at heart, by which I mean that it is a twisted tale of the sort that exists only in grindhouse cinema. If the story were the story here, instead of the lead actress, then maybe this movie would work better, but the movie is saddled with Lohan and the tragic farce her life has become, which overshadows such mundane concerns as whether anybody in the local police department ever bothered to check fingerprints. But the story by novice screenwriter Jeff Hammond does try to do something different, and even if it ultimately fails in that regard it should at least be considered on its own merits. The problem becomes that it takes us a long while to become convinced that this movie is about what it ends up being about; I was into last act before I finally understood it really was going in that direction.

The special features on the DVD include not only an alternate opening and an alternate ending, but also an extended strip dance and bloopers (I am not making that order up). I was almost tempted to take off another star on this train wreck just because of the special features, since the alternate ending speaks to a lake of artistic vision by the director and the extended strip dance qualifies as adding insult to injury. The sexy dance is not sexy, the bloopers are not funny, and in the end the big quandry is whether in the final analysis "I Know Who Killed Me" was hurt or helped by Lohan's presence. Of course, if this indeed proves to be Lohan's last film, the biggest irony would be how she has come full circle from her first one.

Note to Chris Sivertson: You are not David Lynch. There is but one David Lynch in filmmaking, and you are not him. Never will be.

And nowhere is this more evident than in ghastly, painful mess of "I Know Who Killed Me," a thrill-less thriller full of oblique, clumsy symbolism and wretchedly poor scripting. If you need any further proof that Lindsay Lohan's career is in the loo, just look at this.

It opens with a girl at a strip club, then cuts to an identical girl, Aubrey (Lohan) who is sweet, quiet, studious and writes self-contemplative "literature."

But then Aubrey vanishes after a football game, and apparently got kidnapped by a serial killer. She's later found minus an arm and a leg. When her weird parents rush to her bedside, she claims not to be Aubrey. She says she's Dakota, a stripper working in a seedy club, and that she doesn't know anyone around her.

Of course, everyone thinks that this is some bizarre psychological problem. And, of course, it's not. As she struggles to convince everyone (except Aubrey's boyfriend) that she isn't Aubrey, Dakota tries to unravel three mysteries: who the serial killer is, where Aubrey has gone, and what the connection between the two is.

Well, it may be a mystery to Dakota, anyway. But any viewers who manage to stay awake during the first fifteen minutes will not only figure out the connection between the girls, but who the bad guy is. The whole twist ending is completely untwisted from the start, especially when your protagonist is saying absurd things like, "I know who killed me!"

But in the meantime, Siverton tries to evoke a Lynchian atmosphere with lots of symbolism, arty camerawork, and scattered plot threads that go nowhere. People pop up to say Really, Like, Deep Things, then go away. And when the plot flags, Siverton throws in decomposing flesh, awkward sex and pole dances, and some prolonged shots of Lohan squeaking and writhing. Very BDSM.

Apparently in an effort to show the INCREDIBLE DEPTH of his ART, Siverton liberally strews the story with blue items -- roses, gloves, bone saws, etc. What do they symbolize? Who knows, but in case we could have POSSIBLY missed all the blueness, Siverton even tints the camera lenses blue sometimes. Thank you so VERY much, Chris.

But admittedly it's not ALL Siverton's fault. Even a great director would have been hard-pressed to make anything but a turkey of this script, penned by the rambling semiliterate Jeff Hammond. Most of his dialogue vacillates between wooden (""She knew a trick. She knew how to turn her life into a movie and watch what happened") and rancidly cliched ("You'd let both of us die just to keep your secret?").

Lindsay Lohan has shown the public that she has rotten judgement, but this movie is really the clincher. She gives a leaden, dazed performance, highlighted by a pole dance scene that is more comical than sexy. More capable actors -- such as Julia Ormond -- look like they're waiting for shooting to end, so they can collect their checks.

"I Know Who Killed Me" is the rotting turkey of the year, mingling mindless violence, turgidly silly dialogue, and a "twist" you can predict from the beginning. Good only for drinking games... and even then, it might put you to sleep.

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1.0 out of 5 stars I know who killed my time
Note to Chris Sivertson: You are not David Lynch. There is but one David Lynch in filmmaking, and you are not him. Never will be. Read more

Published on Oct 12 2007 by E. A Solinas

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