I Know Who Killed Me (2007, Review)

Director: Chris Sivertson

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Garcelle Beauvais

Sony Pictures / Rated R / Color / NTSC R1 / Widescreen 2.40:1 (Anamorphic) / Standard 1.33:1 / ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC] / FRENCH: Dolby Digital 5.1 / Subtitles: English, Spanish, French / 106 mins / PURCHASE

Aubrey Fleming (Lohan) is a nice teen girl from a loving, respectable upper-middle class family. She hangs out with her friends. Has a football player boyfriend who she won’t let get in her skivvies. And is an aspiring writer. But one night after a football game, she disappears. Late one night she is found on the side of the road half dead and minus half of her right arm and leg. When she awakens, she doesn’t remember her parents and denies being Aubrey, instead she says her name is Dakota Moss. Dakota has a crackhead mom, smokes, drinks and does some underage stripping to make ends meet. Does she have amnesia? Is this a case of mistaken identity? Is there two Lindsay’s running around? *GASP*

Well, this movie got bad press before it was even released. Critics and online reviewers alike couldn’t wait to dig their judgmental claws into the young, tender flesh of Ms. Lohan. Could Lindsay do a serious, non-kid/teen idol role? Was her personal life going to cause problems on the set? Was she going to ruin her first “adult” role? They were hoping so.

Me? I’m a fan of Lindsay’s. Stop staring and close your mouth. You know you liked Mean Girls as much as I did. Don’t lie. And I like naughty girls and she fits that bill fo’ sho’. So I was excited about seeing this and expected, even with all the haters, to like it. Let’s just say “like” may be a little strong in this case. I thought Chris Sivertson’s direction and the camera work/editing was really well done, especially the surreal imagery in some of the flashback scenes. The slow motion strip scenes in the club were very creepy and the colors and music were very effective. I couldn’t help but think of the smoky bar scene in Blue Velvet.

But, and this is a very big but (think Sir Mix-a-lot), every bit of creative energy was sucked out by the horrible plot, dialogue and acting. At some points the dialogue sounded like the badly dubbed Italian horror of the ’70s. The plot was void of any suspense or thrills. Instead it was a sloppy “who-dun-it” with an ending so lame I was actually LOL-ing with myself. Really I kind of expected that from reading all of the bad press before.

Surely Lindsay will save this clunker though. She is the star, so they must have used her well, right? Um, no. Her strip scenes were cool as I said before, but she never stripped! She’s a bad-girl stripper for Christ’s sake…get her at least topless! She even wore clothes for her “I’m not nice Aubrey, I’m slutty Dakota” fuck scene with Aubrey’s bewildered boyfriend. At the end of the scene I think she finally was topless, but it doesn’t count when it’s shot from the back. And the answer is “no”. You know, to the “can she act in a serious role” question. At least not here. Not now.

What this a case of “so bad it’s good”? I haven’t decided yet. I may have to watch it again. I still don’t know what kind of movie they wanted to make. Is it a slasher? A paranormal phenomena flick? A Silence of the Lambs-type thriller? Shit, all I know is it’s a Lindsay-sploitation movie that, like most of the over-hyped exploitation films of the ’70s, didn’t live up to what I wanted or what it should have been.

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