Friday, February 18, 2005

Not your usual slasher movie

Identity. John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet & a bunch of others, are a group of travellers, stranded by floods & forced to stay in a sleazy motel. Then someone starts killing them one by one. Ex-cop Cusack, and Corrections officer Liotta (who is escorting a dangerous prisoner - a typecast Jake Busey) try to keep the group alive & figure out whodunnit.

All is not as it seems however, there are some major WTF moments, which in retrospect, could be deduced from just about the opening scene. There's a parallel story about a mass-murderer who is due to be executed the next day, being interviewed by his psychologist (Alfred Molina). The two stories intersect near the end, in a scene which doesn't shed all explaining light on what's going on, but suddenly causes you to reassess everything you've seen so far... and there's more to come...

Not since Open Your Eyes (and its remake, Vanilla Sky) has a movie been so clever in its misdirection IMO.

Hard to say much more about it without spoilers. Maybe I've said too much already! (Although I draw the line at "Bruce Willis is dead!")

It's directed by James Mangold, who did Girl, Interrupted, and is most definitely worth a look.