I Know Who Killed Me

Director: Chris Sivertson
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Spencer Garrett
Running Time: 105 min.
Rating: R

**1/2 (out of ****)

Spoiler Warning!!! The following review does contain some spoilers about the film's plot.

Sometimes people ask me what kinds of movies I most look forward to reviewing. Not necessarily watching, but REVIEWING. Talking about great movies can be fun, but often it's not as fun as you'd think. This is partly because there are really only a limited number of ways a film can achive greatness. However, it never ceases to amaze me the new and different ways they can be bad. Upon hearing that this infamous Lindsay Lohan disaster I Know Who Killed was "so bad it's great" I marked my calendar for when it would be released on DVD.

The timing for this couldn't be better as it will keep me occupied while I wait for the check Michael Lohan sent me for favorably reviewing Georgia Rule to clear. But sorry even I have my limits. As tempting as it is to praise this film for its hilarious awfulness (and boy is it tempting) I just can't give in because the movie doesn't seem to be in on the joke. Had the movie truly committed to its entertaining badness and not taken itself so seriously this could have ranked among the greatest bad movies. No one could claim the ingredients weren't all there.

Instead it's in limbo, not sure what it wants to be and teetering between being an unintentional "torture porn" spoof, a character study and a mystery. It's not quite bad enough to be considered great trash yet not nearly good enough to warrant praise. Director Chris Sivertson almost seems to have some ambition here to actually make something of merit, which spoils the fun and makes its lesser qualities appear that much worse. The good news (or bad news depending on your outlook) is this hardly means the end for Lohan's career. She'll survive this. The movie may be howlingly bad, but her performance is as good as it could have been under the insane circumstances.

Lohan is Aubrey Fleming, a bright, promising student with loving parents (Julia Ormond and Neal McDonough) and a devoted boyfriend (Brian Geraghty) who is abducted and tortured by a sadistic serial killer tormenting their small idyllic town. Miraculously, she survives and is found days later on the side of the road, but missing a few limbs. She's taken to the hospital where she eventually regains consciousness, except she not only claims to have no memory of the horrific ordeal, but that she really isn't Aubrey Fleming. Instead she says she's a stripper named "Dakota Moss," a character from one of Aubrey's short fiction pieces. This justifiably frustrates the two F.B.I. agents (Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon and Spencer Garrett) who are on the trail of this killer and need answers desperately to prevent future carnage.

Was Aubrey's ordeal so painful that she had to create another personality just to cope with it? Or is she just playing games? What if she REALLY isn't Aubrey? Then the movie goes all Empire Strikes Back on our asses and fits her with a mechanical robo-hand and leg. Dakota comes home and her parents must deal with the trauma of living with a daughter who insists she has no idea who they are and whose hobbies include swearing, smoking and sleeping around. Meanwhile, this crazed serial killer who gets his kicks from dismembering his victims is still on the loose. As long as Aubrey's alive, she's in danger.

This is a film that must be seen to be believed, with laugh out loud moments galore. There's a scene early on when Julia Ormond's character is holding and petting what appears to be a cat while being questioned by an F.B.I. agent. Except the cat is dead. Or fake. I'm not really sure which and I'm even less sure if it matters. My personal favorite though is a scene where the one-handed, one-legged cyborg Dakota is plowing Aubrey's dumbstruck horny boyfriend in her room to prove she's not Audrey . Her mom just covers her face and hides her head in shame in the kitchen as pots and pans shake around her. If she's so upset by this then she should do something about it. Who does she think she is…Dina Lohan? I'm glad she didn't stop it though or we'd be spared the funniest scene in the film in which Geraghty (who's playing this so seriously you'd think it was Hamlet) rushes out of the house and frantically asks the swarm of F.B.I. agents in the driveway if they have any condoms.

Criticizing this movie for being bad is like criticizing the sky for being blue or the sun rising tomorrow morning. It's almost beside the point. I can understand why some have embraced this film as a guilty pleasure because it does test the waters of awfulness in a groundbreaking way unlike anything you've seen in at least the past few years. Unfortunately with the exception of scenes like those it's often too dreary and depressing to really be considered fun and the pace is too cumbersome. Oh, and it's disgusting also.

A small detail that was noticeably absent from what there was of this movie's advertising campaign is that the film is disturbingly graphic and brutal. When you have a killer who just likes to cut off body parts for fun I guess that's to be expected. It's not quite at the Saw or Hostel level but it's clear that was the inspiration even if this lacks a script anywhere close to being as coherent or competent as those. Sivertson does earn points for style though. He makes some interesting choices with lighting and colors and the soundtrack isn't bad. Had he let go and fully explored its potential to be a B horror movie schlockfest we could have had some real fun bad entertainment on our hands. Unfortunately, he seemed more interested in (yawn) putting an actual emphasis on this absurd story and the characters, which causes the film to drag in the middle portion.

There are a couple of brilliant moments though. One comes when in a great bit of stunt casting paranormal radio personality Art Bell appears to give us what could actually almost qualify as a passable explanation for all the nonsense we're witnessing. The film also benefits from having a killer who, while not particularly original or inventive in his approach, is at least terrifying. That he's stuck in one of the funniest comedies of the year instead of as Jigsaw's successor in Saw V is disappointing. He has just a few scenes but does he ever make the most of them.

The film contains two "big twists." One concerns the identity of the killer and the other involves the Aubrey/Dakota situation. One resolution is satisfactory. The other isn't. Although judging from the alternate ending we're shown on the special features I can't honestly claim any better option was available. Looking back it should seem blatantly obvious who the killer is yet when it was revealed I was surprised for some strange reason. I'm convinced this has nothing to do with any cleverness on the screenwriters' parts but rather the fact I was too distracted by all the silliness to even bother paying attention.

Despite the box office train wrecks of Georgia Rule and now I Know Who Killed Me the one thing that remained constant was that Lohan was the best part of both. Unsurprisingly here she clicks better as trashy stripper Dakota than virginal good girl Aubrey, although she isn't given much chance at tackling the latter since the script doesn't seem interested in fleshing out that character at all. Lohan does have a magnetizing presence on screen and you can see through the cracks what she's capable of with better material. Just that she manages to not give a bad performance in a film this bad is an accomplishment in itself.

I could see I Know Who Killed Me becoming a curious time capsule film of sorts down the line provided Lohan eventually gets her act together and moves on to creatively substantial projects worthy of her time and talent. I'll also say that while I can't in good conscience recommend this film without visiting a church confessional tomorrow morning, I'd much rather see a movie fail like this than go the way of safe, boring, mainstream Hollywood dreck like Ocean's Thirteen and Hairspray which I also recently gave two and a half stars to.

This at least took risks and I'm still laughing at some of the scenes that unfolded in it. The script is terrible, most of the acting is bad, the direction is muddled, yet at times it is entertaining in the worst way. And therein lies the contradiction with entertainingly bad movies like this. At the end of the day no matter how fun they may be, they're still bad.