Sunday, March 7, 2010

Canon Movie Review: I Know Who Killed Me

It's Oscar Weekend, and you know what that means? It's also Razzie Weekend. The Razzies are held the day before the Oscars, "honoring" the worst in film for the year. So, in honor of the Razzies, I decided I would choose a previous winner of worst picture at random and watch that movie. I was hoping for Mommie Dearest, or anything besides The Love Guru, really, but I ended up with the Lindsay Lohan classic, I Know Who Killed Me. I don't really like thriller movies or horror movies or whatever you call this crap, but dang it, I watched the movie anyway. After further review, it should have been called I Know What Killed My Career. I'm sure at least 500 people have already made that joke, but I don't care. A few thoughts about this movie:

-Like that show with Christian Slater, Lohan is two people, or rather two personas One is Audrey, an honor student who plays piano and writers short-stories, but quits playing the piano. She has a boyfriend, but is more focused on her future than anything else. Lately, she's been writing stories about another girl named Dakota, who is an underage stripper whose mom died of a drug overdose.

- One night after a football game, Audrey gets abducted by a serial killer, who proceeds to cut off one of her arms and one of her legs. She's found on the side of the road by a passenger and is taken to the hospital. But when she wakes up, Audrey claims to be Dakota. Oh NO!

- It was pretty obvious the director was trying to show off his artistic skills. Unfortunately, that didn't really help the plot at all, and got tiresome pretty quickly. Like I'm supposed to be impressed that they can stop a scene and change the color into a blue tint, and then quickly a red tint. Whoop-de-damn-doo.

- Another thing that the director did is beat the viewer over the head with the theme of color. Audrey is associated with blue and Dakota is associated with red. Therefore, whenever there's an Audrey scene, she's wearing blue, the walls are usually blue and so is the lighting, while as Dakota, she's wearing red, the lighting's red, etc, etc. The significance of this is never really properly explained. Guess it's one of those things above my head or something.

- I would call the FBI agents in this movie dumb, but that's an insult to dumb FBI Agents. These agents are also lazy, unmotivated, and clueless. The only detective work they do is yelling at Dakota for a minute and trying to blame her for any further punishment the killer might inflict. They don't really ask about who she was seen with or who could possibly have motive. The only thing they are good for is badgering victims and sucking at acting.

- Julia Ormond and Neal McDounagh play Aubrey's parents. They played there roles with the enthusiasm of someone who has already been paid up front. They looked bored, more than anything else.

- Aubrey's boyfriend comes to visit after the incident. Despite the fact that the girl has lost an arm and a leg in a traumatic manner, and has taken on a totally different persona, he has no problem doing the deed, if you know what I mean. Personally, I might have taken a step or two back, but to each their own. To make things almost comedic, the mother hears all the sounds coming from the horizontal gymastics display upstairs, and so she does the only thing she can, taking a sponge and vigorously scrubbing the sides of the sink. She probably could have gone into a room not directly below the bedroom, but I guess that would take too much effort.

- Lohan plays a stripper, and has a long sex scene, but never gets naked. Which is ok by me, but from what I read about the movie, that really cheesed a lot of people off. To each their own, I suppose.

- There was a scene early in the movie where Audrey interacts with the gardener at her house. In what appears to be an attempt at flirting, he takes off his shirt, picks up a tree branch, and simulates masturbation with it. Even with all of the blood and the limb removal scenes, that is the most disturbing scene in the movie.

- Crabman from My Name is Earl makes an appearance. He plays the Prosthetic Technician, helping Audrey/Dakota adjusts to her new limbs. That includes a battery powered leg, which apparently runs out of juice in about 10 minutes, since there were multiple occasions where it was out.

- All of this I could forgive, except for the fact that the movie came completely off the rails in the last 20 minutes or so. We at least know who the killer is, but really I had no idea if this was real or just another one of Audrey's crazy stories. The ending is quite ambiguous (and to be honest somewhat ridiculous), and I was hoping for at least some clarity.

Overall, I was expecting worse. After all, this movie won a record eight Razzie awards, and everything I had heard about this movie was that it was a big pile of suck. While it did suck, it wasn't a big pile of it. The main problems were that it was boring, and the characters, with the exception of Dakota, are one dimensional portrayals, and have little to no importance to the story. Also, the direction of this movie is too overhanded, and the plot, like I said, falls apart at the end. It's not one of those "so bad it's good" movies either, it's just flat and boring, more than anything else. Overall, I would give this movie about a 2.5 out of ten, as it did have the possibility to be a decent movie, but unfortunately, the movie fell into the wrong hands. I must say I have seen much worse movies, though.

Well, thanks for reading. If you have any ideas for future reviews or posts, than e-mail them to me at KtheC2001@gmail.com. Until next time, here's the trailer for I Know Who Killed Me:

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