I Know Who Killed Me

I Know Who Killed Me *

Directed by Chris Sivertson
Written by Jeff Hammond

Starring:
Lindsay Lohan as Aubrey Fleming/Dakota Moss
Julia Ormond as Susan Fleming
Neal McDonough as Daniel Fleming
Brian Geraghty as Jerrod Pointer
Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon as Agent Julie Bascome
Spencer Garrett as Agent Phil Lazarus
Gregory Itzin as Dr. Greg Jameson
Bonnie Aarons as Fat Teena
Kenya Moore as Jazmin
Thomas Tofel as Douglas Norquist
Rodney Rowland as Kenny Scaife
David Figlioli as Lanny Rierden

106 Minutes(Rated R for grisly violence including torture and disturbing gory images, and for sexuality, nudity and language. )
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One of America's most beloved actresses, Lindsay Lohan, returns with yet another masterpiece of add to her very diverse filmography-"I Know Who Killed Me."

OR

One of America's most joked about actress Lindsay Lohan returns with yet another complete failure to add to her impressively dismal resume-"I Know Who Killed Me."

And with the latter description, we have a winner. On the heels of her creepy mother daughter relationship film "Georgia Rule" at the start of the summer, Lohan returns to kill the summer and her career with two things so bad that I don't even know which is worse. And, alright fine I'll admit, you could probably now say that she is at least TRYING to divert away from the teenie bop image that she conjured for herself after movies like "The Parent Trap," "Freaky Friday," and "Mean Girls," but in the end-those were actually three decent films. And by trying to pick the most inane, stupid, illogical, and pathetic excuse for a thriller does not show that she has a "range of talent," it just shows that she has a "range of tolerance" as she works with some of the most unimaginative and sadly talentless people in the industry.

"I Know Who Killed Me" starts off with Lohan as Aubrey Fleming, a perfect little high school student. She wants to be a writer, so she writes these horrible pulp stories that we hear a little bit about. She plays the piano, but wants to quit so that she could write these horrible stories more often. And she has a boyfriend who she refuses to sleep with because she'll be going away to college soon to write some more of these horrible stories. . . all the time. And then she is kidnapped one night, forced to endure night after night of torture, and then she is found seventeen days later on the side of the road. She is brought to the hospital, but when she wakes up and her parents are hovering over her saying "Aubrey, you're going to be alright," she responds with "Whose Aubrey?" She claims that she is Dakota Moss, the daughter of a drug addict whose mother is now dead, and who is whoring herself to men and working as a stripper to makes some kind of ends meet. And the police are angry because she is not helping to catch the real killer, and her parents are angry because they have suffered enough, and the parents of another girl who was killed are angry because they want revenge. And Dakota's angry because everyone thinks that she is somebody she isn't. And this identity crisis escalates into something darker as Dakota tries to find out the secrets of everything, more or less.

I kind of think that Lohan was under the impression that with "I Know Who Killed Me" she could be taken seriously as an actress. And in this life, being taken seriously as an actress means that she has to
1) show more of her body-it's very important to have a sex scene or two
2) scream and yell-it's important to have been kidnapped
3) curse more-especially in those scenes where you're really angry

And since she manages to fulfill all three of those requirements, it means that she has proven her range. Right? Wrong! Lohan has never been worse. She was actually better in "Georgia Rule" than she was here. All of her more "raunchy" scenes-the sex scene, the strip club scenes, the torture scenes-she does with so much awkwardness and staleness that it just wasn't believable. She never made me feel sorry for Aubrey or Dakota or whoever she was. She was just plain annoying. And don't get me wrong. I am not being harsh to Lohan for her behavior outside of film. Honestly, I couldn't care less if she was actually caught sniffing cocaine in the back of a car going 120 miles per hour with her at the wheel. It's her movie that I went to see, and its her movie that was horrible-and it would have been horrible had it been released a week ago before her arrest, and it would have been horrible had it been released a year ago before she was arrested the first time. And Lohan looks like an Oscar contender compared to everybody else that surrounds her. Every single background character-from her parents, to her boyfriend, to the police, to the doctors-look like they are having the worst time working her. Nobody puts any emotion, everyone is wooden as can be, and they all look like they need some energy, and right away. I was bored just watching them, and this is only an hour and forty minute movie.

And now lets move on to technical work. First, the direction. Director Chris Sivertson seems to think that he is some kind of David Lynch film student, and he does all the classic Lynch techniques-the dark road, the close ups on the screaming actresses face (which I saw in "Inland Empire" last year), and the strange use of color. Every now and then Sivertson will cover the screen in this beautiful shade of blue, and while this is a bit gritty and dark, it served no point than to try to make the film more gritty and dark. And then the script, which is just ridiculous. In these thrillers, there is always that point where the viewer kind of wants to have answers, however bad. But the answers that this screenplay presents are just so implausible that there is no way that you will guess it. There are two twists here. The first is the mystery of Lohan's strange memory problem. There is no way that you will guess it because the concept of it isn't introduced until well after the hour mark, and it is so ridiculous and out of this world that any sane person would even think that it would be a possibility. And then the second twist, the ultimate answer to who the killer is, is even more inane-once again I did not see it coming because there was never a clue except for when Dakota knows who did it. And when she knew, I still didn't know. And the final minute was more impossible notions, defying most laws of. . .well, I guess life.

It's a shame this was no good, but yet again I have been disappointed with the prospects of a dark thriller. The same thing happened with last year's "The Black Dahlia," but unlike that one, this seemed to have no hope from the get go. If Lohan did not sign on, I doubt this would have had a theatre release, and would have either aired on Starz one night or just went straight to video. Or it may never have been made. At least that way you'll know that your intelligence is spared for an hour and forty minutes. "I Know Who Killed Me," as well as Lohan's outside behavior, is sure to spare me of another one of her failed attempts to do more "serious" work.

Playing at:

Mostly everywhere.