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I Know Who Killed Me
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough
Directed by: Chris Sivertson
Released: 2007
Grade: D+
[[ buy soundtrack @ amazon ]]
As her career and "beauty" waned, the aging Joan Crawford found a new niche starring in B-movies throughout the '50s and '60s (Johnny Guitar and Strait-Jacket were the most notable). While these projects brought little success in their day, they are now considered cult classics. But Crawford's move stemmed from necessity, new audiences, and, let's face it, a little bit of insanity. So why would a young starlet at the peak of her career prematurely chose a similar path by starring in the next Showgirls? I asked myself this question of Lindsay Lohan many times during I Know Who Killed Me, a movie that even the most coke influenced decision making couldn't justify.
I Know plays out like a story written by that obnoxious girl in every creative writing class. You know that girl-the one who pens edgy pieces about sordid realities she has never experienced, secretly wishing something terrible had happened to her so that she'd have motivation for her art. Apparently, the director was also aware of this as our main character, the budding young writer Aubrey, is introduced reading her own sleazy tale, that of a pill popping stripper Dakota, to her high school english class. Little does she know that the girl in her story is actually her long lost twin sister. Or is she? The answers to this very question prove dumbfounding to say the least, as the viewer tries to make sense out of this borderline fetish film.
The premise involves a sinister serial killer picking off young girls by severing their limbs with a set of blue glass torture instruments (blue is a dominant color motif throughout, so blatant that Aubrey's boyfriend actually gives her a blue rose). When Aubrey inevitably becomes one of the victims, a slew of FBI agents storm the town, setting up temporary headquarters in a nearby church to mull over grisly autopsy photos and throw around half-baked theories (these scenes expose us to such priceless dialogue as "I hope we're not interrupting bingo night" and "But he didn't count on her will to live!"). When Aubrey is discovered alive, albeit missing half her leg and arm, she lapses into an identity crisis, claiming to be the fictional Dakota and not the privileged uptown girl everyone is looking for. We're offered a string of possibilities ranging from hysterical amnesia to stigmatic twins, none of which pans out in this completely implausible thriller.
The quality of the movie further degenerates as we're privy to Aubrey/Dakota's point of view, the audience wincing as her digits are slowly sawed off by a mysterious man in a dank cellar so creepy it makes Buffalo Bill's back woods shack look like a bed and breakfast. The shock value of these images are not particularly new (I Know comes on the heels of Hostel, Touristas and others) but the editing parallels the brutality with lingering strip tease segments, shamelessly equating the violence with sex in an effort to implicate the audience in deriving pleasure from both. Even after the mystery has exhausted itself into ridiculousness, the movie won't be done until we witness every grueling, bone-crushing slice and uncomfortably long pole dance. We even have to stare at her bruised stumps.
While grading I Know as a B-movie would be a compliment, I didn't entirely hate the experience. It had an unabashed soft-core Poison Ivy quality, complete with comically overdone sex sequences. What made it truly unbearable was the creative devices the director incorporated to try and pull the production out of sleaziness, from color symbolism and homages to early horror fare (an operating room scene recalls the hospital sequences from The Exorcist), to heavily stylized shots. Half the time I felt like I was watching the movie underwater due to the overuse of slow motion and sound warping. But the pulsating soundtrack that ran the gamut from the sexy ambience of Trans Am to the robotic pop of The Melvins kept the mess interesting, a move that didn't necessarily make me want to stay as much as it left me yearning to get home and start downloading.
As Lohan boozes and skanks it up on screen, I wondered if she was consciously going for an ironic art-imitates-life portrayal, much like how Crawford's real life madness played out in movies like Strait-Jacket, or if she is just totally oblivious. Maybe she's doing it on purpose to set herself up as the next comeback kid. But something tells me she's not that brilliant.
by Amanda Waltz