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.
