The First: Identity

When I was upon the stair

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today.

I wish, I wish he'd go away.

   I first watched Identity when it was released on DVD in 2004.  I was thirteen or maybe fourteen.  Beforethat I hadn't had much experience with horror.  I wasn't allowed to watch The X-Files, Are You Afraid of the Dark? or even The Nightmare Before Christmas.  My parents rented it from Family Video and somehow I convinced them to let me stay up and watch it with them.  I was instantly hooked on horror.

   The lawyer and psychiatrist of Malcolm Rivers is trying to keep him from being executed.  Meanwhile, eleven strangers are trapped in a seedy motel by a torrential downpour and flash flooding.  Weirdly enough, all of these characters are named after states.  One of their names is Lou Isiana.  Seriously, look it up.  It's the story of misdirection of almost zany proportions.

   John Cusack is the main protagonists.  He's a cop-turned-limo driver.  Supposedly he quit being a cop because he was unable to save a suicide victim, but I wonder if it wasn't because of his lackluster detective skills.  Amanda Peet plays a prostitute-turned-orchard owner.  I wasn't aware that prostitutes make enough money to buy orange groves on E-bay. John C. McGinley best known for playing the aggressive, sarcastic Dr. Cox in Scrubs, plays a bumbling man child.  Finally Jake Busey plays pretty much the same character he always does, which is to say that Jake Busey in general is pretty creeptastic.  Not surprising, considering the genetics that contributed to those giant teeth.
   When I first saw this movie I was super excited about the twist ending.  Keep in mind that was at a time before twist endings became almost required for horror movies.  Now it turns out that everyone is either dead or crazy or some other kind of unreliable narrator.

   Identity gets three out of five heads in a drier, if only for nostalgia's sake.