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entertaining u newspaper: your monthly guide to entertainment
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by kellie abrahamson kabrahamson1@aol.com
F Rated R 105 min.
I could make a lot of Lindsay Lohan/cocaine jokes right now. Heck, I’ve been thinking them up all week in anticipation of writing this review. But, truth be told, as I sit here thinking back at the train wreck that is Lindsay’s latest, I Know Who Killed Me, I can’t help but refrain out of sheer compassion. I honestly feel sorry for this girl and her fans since there is no hope of her ever coming back from being associated with this horrifyingly terrible waste of theater space.
Aubrey Fleming (Lohan) is your average high school senior. She’s got a cute boyfriend (Brian Geraghty), a couple close girlfriends (Kenya Moore and Jessica “LonelyGirl15” Rose) and big dreams that include Ivy League colleges and fame as an author. Her picture-perfect world comes crashing down when she is kidnapped and brutally tortured by a sadistic serial killer. It seems her life, like those of the girls before her, is coming to a swift, painful end. One night, however, fate gives her a second chance.
To the relief of her parents (Julia Ormond and Neal McDonough) and the entire town, Aubrey is found mutilated but alive. The only problem is that Aubrey doesn’t remember her picture-perfect life. In fact, Aubrey claims they have the wrong girl. She says her name is Dakota Moss, the only child of a crack-addict who died of an overdose not long ago.
Dakota is nothing like Aubrey. She works at a strip club, smokes cigarettes, sleeps around and curses up a storm. Much to the dismay of the FBI, who sees Aubrey/Dakota as the key to cracking their case, Dakota’s unwilling to cooperate with their investigation, insisting she doesn’t remember how she got her injuries or who the killer is. The cops think she’s a liar and her parents think she’s disturbed, but Dakota is determined to prove that she is not Aubrey Fleming. The only way to do that is to find the missing girl herself.
Sounds intriguing, huh? I thought so too, which is why I’ve actually been keeping an eye on I Know Who Killed Me for the past couple months. The film’s website was launched a while back and featured the killer’s “video blog,” which has creepy clips of him stalking his victims. It was deliciously eerie and worked to get me eager to see the film. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I watched the finished product, which was filled with ridiculous dialogue, terrible acting and a heaping helping of camp on par with Snakes on a Plane, but without the irony.
There were literally no good performances in this film. Lohan, who I’ve always thought was a decent, even good actress, turns in her absolute worst performance to date. I actually cringed during some of her dialogue. But she was almost great compared to everyone else. Wooden acting from the entire supporting cast brought out a distinctly B-movie feel, like something you would watch on TV at 2 am when nothing else is on. Julia Ormond in particular gives a spectacularly “Lifetime original movie” performance. It didn’t help that her one “heart-wrenching” scene had her holding a freaky looking hairless cat that gave the entire audience the giggles every time it came on screen. The dialogue and the cat weren’t the only thing that had viewers rolling in the aisles during the screening I attended. Somehow the film managed to hit on every cheesy horror movie cliché in the book.
During the climax no one ever calls the police or looks behind them or otherwise avoids contact with the antagonist. And, of course, the killer manages to have super-human strength and agility despite being badly injured. On top of all that, the film has really silly plot elements. For example, Dakota is given a high-tech prosthetic leg that has to be plugged in to charge and beeps when the battery is low. So there she is, tromping through the woods during the film’s final scenes with a beeping fake leg. I couldn’t make this stuff up, folks.
Those who are interested in seeing Lindsay bare all for her big stripping scene are in for a great deal of disappointment as well. She’s the only stripper in the whole strip club that doesn’t strip. You can’t even call her an exotic dancer because she doesn’t dance either. She walks around a pole and poses provocatively and then crawls around on the floor for a while. The strip club scenes were overly long and gratuitous, thrown in because the director could, not because they moved the story along in any way. The only people who may be happy are those looking to see some gore. There are plenty of gross-out torture scenes that will have you squirming in your seat; whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you.
After this critical and theatrical flop (I Know Who Killed Me only made a little over $3 million during its opening weekend- ouch) and her drunken driving/possession arrest, you’ve got to feel a little sorry for Lindsay Lohan. But, whatever you do, don’t let your compassion for the fallen star lead you to wasting your time and money on this steaming pile. As kind as that would be, it’s just not worth it.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
