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 Lindsay Lohan is stalked by a serial killer in I Know Who Killed Me, a movie with an uber-convoluted plot and hammy acting. |
They say there's no such thing as bad publicity, and in the case of Lindsay Lohan's latest train-wreck -- er, movie -- they're probably right on the money.
The oft-addled starlet's arrest the other day on drunk driving charges is almost certain to eclipse the release of I Know Who Killed Me -- definitely a good thing, since the flick deserves to die a quick death.
A dog's-breakfast pastiche of psychological thriller, police procedural and torture-porn, the film is an embarrassment of epic proportions -- although it might come in handy to the lawyers tasked with building a case against Lohan, as you'd have to be pretty coked-up to lend your star power to something this ridiculous.
The uber-convoluted plot -- which just gets more laughably implausible from one scene to the next -- hinges on Aubrey Fleming (Lohan), a promising upper-class teen who's abducted by a fledgling serial killer, only to resurface weeks later with a few of her limbs missing.
The only other hitch? The young woman keeps insisting she isn't Aubrey at all, but rather a tough-as-nails stripper/prostitute named Dakota, who has been fending for herself ever since her crackhead parents cut her loose.
Obviously, Dakota's claims don't go over very well with Aubrey's parents, her himbo boyfriend, or the FBI agents who think she's just being uncooperative. And, really, what jaded hooker wouldn't pass up a chance to trade in her skid-row existence for that of a coddled suburban princess?
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Anyway, though she's initially at a loss to explain the little matter of her recent amputations -- the expository flashbacks come later, as do the loving closeups of her stumps -- Dakota eventually realizes she might be Aubrey's doppelganger, and the real Aubrey might still be in need of rescuing.
Ludicrous as the story sounds, the film itself is even worse, bogged down by hammy acting, poorly staged gross-outs, and a recurring visual motif that telegraphs the killer's identity so often they might as well have used it in the poster art. Oh wait -- they did.
The movie's tone is over the place -- skipping from a
slow-motion striptease (more tired than titillating), to an indie-pop-scored creative-writing montage, to a torture dungeon straight out of one of the Hostel movies. All in the first 10 minutes.
The remainder of the flick -- wa-a-ay too long at 105 minutes -- is similarly schizophrenic. A sex scene between Aubrey's clueless boyfriend and the newly legless Dakota is played for porny laughs, but like the strip-club interludes, falls flat. Meanwhile, unintentional yuks are scored when Lohan takes a shovel to the face, or when paranormal radio host Art Bell shows up to explain non-religious stigmata.
Speaking of laughs, Lohan's dual performances also warrant mention. Though she has delivered solid work in films such as Freaky Friday and A Prairie Home Companion, her dramatic range in this stinker extends from sulky to super-crazy-sulky.
By the time Dakota starts getting medical advice from a heavily CGI-ed guardian angel, or begins seeing cheesy, mist-clouded visions in the face of a grandfather clock, or re-attaches her damned finger without so much as breaking a sweat, you'll be thinking back to an urban legend Aubrey cited earlier in the film, about a killer who dispatches unwitting moviegoers by administering lethal injections from the seat behind them.
"Nobody even knows you're dead until the movie's over and you don't get up," she warns.
We should be so lucky.