| Lohan plays Aubrey
Fleming, a college student with a gift for music and for
fiction-writing. She lives a seemingly normal life with Mom and
Dad in an idyllic town, attending classes and fending off advances
from her boyfriend. However, that peaceful existence is
shattered when she is abducted and tortured by a serial killer.
Found at the side of a road, eighteen days later, with her right arm and
leg almost severed, she is rushed to the hospital where the
doctors must finalize the amputations. She awakes with an
entirely different personality -- insisting that she is not Aubrey,
but Dakota Moss, a stripper who has a grim past.
I cannot really venture past this point without divulging any
spoilers. However, the plot veers all over the place after this
fascinating premise, touching on some odd possibilities that extend
the limits of plausibility to the breaking point.
One could make the argument that the viewer isn't really seeing a
factual account of events, merely the imaginative storytelling of
those events -- something along the lines of the great 2003 French
film, "Swimming Pool" starring Ludivine Sagnier and Charlotte Rampling.
Unfortunately, "I Know Who Killed Me" doesn't have the courage of
that comparative thriller. Instead of trusting the power of the
initial material, it stumbles into slasher territory, virtually
tripping over itself in an attempt to scare us. This could have
been a gem if it had replaced the final third with a "Mulholland
Drive-like" descent into the psyche of fiction writers versus mundane
reality.
When the film crawled to a weary ending, I was left with the bitter
aftertaste of disappointment and boredom -- a feat I thought hard to
achieve considering how highly I rate Lindsay Lohan as an acting
talent and an incomparable beauty. She still manages a good
performance here, but one that is wasted in a crummy film.
I know Lindsay has had a rough time of it lately -- the mistakes
are clear and the media is piling on with every chance they get.
I can only hope that this rare talent can get back on solid ground as
soon as possible. I am rooting for her to get through all this
so that we can see her on the big screen for years to come.
That being said, she needs to avoid bad publicity and film material
like this -- neither will help in the grand scheme of things. "I
Know Who Killed Me" is the first Lohan film that I am not recommending
in some form or another. It isn't a total disaster... just a
nothing movie that blew any chance it had by taken the path most
travelled.
Let's hope that former child star, Lindsay Lohan, doesn't make the
same mistake. |
