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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 428672" data-attributes="member: 23">Identity (2003) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.impawards.com%2F2003%2Fposters%2Fidentity.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=4287f52cfda83f4322d7b62a0c3e5e36b8f9818389d34922a51453fc6682b486" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> It's a nice feeling to start watching a film with low-key hopes, having them met immediately, then discovering there's a whole lot more to the film that I couldn't have envisaged from the description. And that's exactly what happened here. While the poster is familiar enough that I'm sure I was aware of the film (though admittedly it does look almost generically like any number of other horror/thriller posters of the era... not least the glossy House On Haunted Hill  remake). Still, I knew nothing about it at the time. The Prime image and description helpfully showed me that John Cusack and Ray Liotta are present and correct, which was good enough. Ahead of watching I'd somehow picked up that the premise was "inspired by Agatha Christie's 1939 whodunnit And Then There Were None" (to give it its post-1985, politically correct title). This lowered any expectations considerably since the idea of an American horror trying to out Christie Christie is borderline offensive. Fortunately, this film is smart enough to take its own direction (I almost wrote "its own identity") without an air of pretence. It does get meta about its inspiration, however, in a scene where someone explicitly references "that old movie where ten people are trapped on an island", and uses that story to propel this one forwards. One of the producers of the original Scream trilogy is involved here, so perhaps this self awareness isn't surprising. And Then They Were None (with elements of Scream postmodernism) isn't the film's only inspiration, I think. It has to be said that showing all the characters arriving at the location where they were to be stranded reminded me a little of Clue (even if Identity's cleverness was showing even at this point, though, with events leading up to their arrival shown in a non-time-linear way but with slick crossovers between them). And the motel setting is always going to bring Psycho to mind. Are motels still a thing in the States? I tend to think of them as belonging to a certain era, but that too could be Psycho influencing me. The film certainly looks very slick and glossy. Right out of the gate, the atmosphere is one of the "it was a dark and stormy night" variety, with thunder, lightning and biblical rain. Subtle this isn't but I had no objections because I have a particular fondness for this atmosphere in any medium of fiction. Also adding to the ambience is Alan Silvestri's evocative score, which I'll probably seek out. The cast is fairly top-notch. John Cusack alone would have made it compelling. As seen in this very thread, I'm a fairly recent convert to his talent and I'm slowly discovering his body of work. I've yet to watch him in a role where he isn't brilliant. Ray Liotta does his Ray Liotta thing, which is predictable but adds plenty of intensity. It was a lovely surprise to see Alfred Molina as I've chanced upon (or in some cases sought out) a number of his projects recently. He, too, is as reliable as ever. Rebecca DeMornay is also present as a pampered and narcissistic actress.  Less impressive but somehow reassuringly familiar is Jake Busey playing a convicted murderer, as he does in pretty much everything (most familiar to me is The Frighteners, a film of which I'm very fond). Within half an hour, I had a gut feeling about the identity of the killer, in which I stayed resolute even after it seemed they'd been ruled out. This meant that when the reveal came and it was who I thought it was, I had the rare satisfaction of saying (out loud) "I knew it!". What I hadn't expected, though, was the rug being pulled out from under before that point with a certain reveal that I could never have seen coming, and that changed everything. Usually, I would feel a little cheated by this, but it was so effective and so brilliantly played that I was completely invested. What's more, it dovetails perfectly with a similar reveal in a film I've watched very recently (I now view the other film as slightly less brilliant because it came a good number of years after Identity). I would hope this film may hold up well to a second or third viewing, with the knowledge of what's really going on. And I'd certainly be up for giving it another spin.</blockquote>

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