Friday, November 30, 2007

I beg to differ.



(Do note that this post, as per the movie, contains a bit of graphic content, such as stabbings, flesh being ripped from the body and Lindsay Lohan. I know I was too late to save you from the above, but you've seen worse.)

Meet Aubrey Fleming. She is one half of the brassy, orange-colored harlot protagonist in the best movie of 2007, I Know Who Killed Me. And as we can see, she is a confused lass. But wouldn't you be too? I know I was as I crawled through this movie, not once, but twice. The first viewing was online because I was intent on not spending any money; the second, a rental party with two good friends on the day it came out.

Since I doubt anyone else has watched this movie, this post will be a brief summary of the movie, in both pictures and text. What better way is there to expose the incredulity of this movie but to use...well, the movie itself?



Point proven.

Anyway, the story begins with some incredibly inane stripping sequences. I didn't bother to cap them because believe it or not, LiLo does the least erotic striptease to ever be committed to celluloid. She doesn't even get naked. No weather-beaten orange tatas for you!

Of course, this is Evil Twin LiLo, who we don't see for about another half hour. In the meantime, we get to hang out with Aubrey. She's a sweet girl who likes blue roses, playing the piano, and getting fingered in Biology class.



This is her boyfriend. Conveniently, he found a blue rose. If you aren't familiar with this movie's incredibly subtle and expressive color symbolism, prepare to become so. Uh...that's a classy way of saying that you'll be seeing either blue or red in every single shot of the movie. Immediately after the shot above, for instance...



That idiot pricks herself on a thorn. Blue to red! You could interpret this as beautiful things having deadly secrets, or violence leading to pain, or a talentless film director shoehorning metaphors into his script to make his movie seem deep. I think you know where my dollar's placed.

Anyway, despite warnings of a serial killer prowling the neighborhood, Aubrey wanders off by herself after a football game and manages to get kidnapped. Cue ominous blue fade from this shot:



to this one:



Yep, ol' LiLo's stumbled into some torture porn! I actually kind of feel bad for her; she must have legitimately thought this would have been her big jump into a more mature film career. "Mature film" meaning something different than what it sounds like, of course, though porn only seems like the next logical step after this and her rehab stints.

So obviously, one person is having fun in this scene. It's not Aubrey, and it's definitely not the viewer, because we get treated to images like this.



Classy, right? This is the stuff adult dramas are made of. I, for one, loved the fingernail torture sequence in Remains of the Day, but that's just me.

Aubrey wakes up in the hospital and treats us to what must be the single most hilarious shot of the movie. I don't know what that says about me as a human being, but I laughed for about five minutes the first time I watched this.



We soon discover, however, that she is not only missing limbs but also her identity! Aubrey now calls herself "Dakota Moss," a hardened stripper/crack fiend, completely removed of the virginal if not still slutty-looking Aubrey. What's really great about her sudden transformation is that Lindsay Lohan plays both characters EXACTLY the same, right down to the mannerism. Her voice is a little harsher and that's it. The only difference between these two is Dakota says "fuck" a lot, which is clearly the key to being taken seriously as an actress.

This has little plot relevance, but I like that the police show a horrified amputation victim pictures of the last girl her assailant murdered.




See that look of anguish? That's Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. FBI, FTW!

Once Aubrey Dakota is well enough to leave her bed, the police interrogate her about her whereabouts and identity. I don't know where she lives - Callous Law Enforcement Town? It's almost as if the screenwriter was trying really hard to advance the plot forward...and sacrificed all credibility in the process. Nah, couldn't be! It was also during this scene that I noticed that LiLo's severed limb looks like either a hot dog or a penis.



Basically, Dakota regales the police with her hidden past. Her mother kept her a secret from the world, so she doesn't have any birth records, but that didn't stop her from becoming a stripper at the age of 4 or however old she is.



Hey, does she remind you at all of another recently melted-down celebrity? This shot is an eerie portent of the future Miss Spears, which is perhaps its only cultural worth. Hairless Testicle Cat notwithstanding.

Basically, Dakota's mom died and she has nowhere else to go, so "Aubrey's" mom benevolently decides to "adopt" her. But not before she gets fitted with some sweet cyborg limbs!



That is some straight-up Star Wars shit right there. I waited very expectantly for the scene where Aubrey's father goes "Dakota, I am your father" and Dakota says "No you're not! You stole me from the dead crackwhore down the hall and sent my sister off to New Zealand where you're paying her with monthly child support. I KNOW WHO KILLED ME!" Oh wait, that ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Dakota Aubrey Dakota comes back home to find her boyfriend expectantly waiting for his chaste Aubrey. What he finds is something completely different, though no less hot.



You know what it's time for? Cripple sex!



I kind of wish I had screencapped this more. It's really great because the sex scene is intercut with shots of Aubrey's mom scrubbing things with immense frustration, trying to drown out the sounds of her daughter's gimpy orgasming. The sex itself is incredibly boring and poorly-filmed, but that hardly seems to matter.

Now the movie cuts to a flashback. Confused yet? Hang on! Dakota's finger falls off in the shower, and she is immediately reminded of a similar experience she had at the strip club, where - I kid you not - her finger falls off during her routine. Most fucked-up strip club everrrr. Anyway, Dakota manages to avoid suspicion by telling her boss that she "cut herself with a beer bottle" and didn't need to go to the hospital because "they're for rich people." Yeah.

On the bus back to...wherever she's going, she encounters this ridiculously irrelevant Jesus figure.




And no, that second picture isn't pre-coitus - it's part of a twisted dream sequence that involves tattoos coming to life - but it wouldn't have surprised me because Dakota's a whore. This enigmatic Asian tells her "people get cut. That's life" and never appears again.

Back to the present. It is at this point that Dakota Aubrey Dakota becomes convinced somehow that her sudden injuries are of some importance (OMG REALLY???) Tapping into the unlimited power of the internets, she makes this excellent Ask.com search:



They're not just bleeding, but they're UNEXPLAINED too. Just like this movie. This incredibly useful search actually manages to take her to exactly the page she needs, an informative video about the stigmata. Look at this picture and try to tell me that this movie is taking itself seriously. I dare you.



He informs her that bleeding wounds unexplained can occur in identical twins, which automatically leads her to conjecture that she is a twin and her father sent her sister to New Zealand where he is paying her monthly child support. Now we knew that Dakota wasn't exactly a deductive mind to rival Holmes, but seriously, this is just ridiculous. Her mom whips out the sonogram of her pregnancy that she conveniently kept but NO science deters Dakota Moss!



At this point a lot of boring shit that I didn't feel like capping happens. What it leads up to is that Dakota wanders to the grave of the first girl that the serial killer murdered. There, she discovers this illegible ribbon.



This incredibly important discovery leads her to believe that it was the piano teacher who was behind it all along! SHE KNOWS WHO KILLED HER! But God knows how. Dakota/Audrey's brain kind of works in its own bizarre little world, where logical gaps make perfect sense.

Also, a dual-color split screen with your Saran-wrapped and buried twin-not-twin is something that every movie should have.



Aubrey, determined to stop her assailant at all costs, goes to the piano teacher's house armed with absolutely nothing but her battery-powered leg. I guess you can't really be "armed" with a leg, though. Fuck you I thought it was funny.

Also, her dad died.



But there's no time for grief! (as if we gave a fuuuuuck) The piano teacher finds her prowling around in his basement garden of body parts, and after a brief struggle, he - I kid you not - beats her unconscious with her own cyborg arm. If I could make GIFs, I would, and you would see it everywhere, because this scene is just too perfect. I think it's an accurate representation of Aubrey's struggles thus far; no matter what she tries to do, something incredibly stupid just beats the shit out of her. I KNOW WHO KILLED ME AND IT'S MYSELF!

Dakota or Aubrey or who-the-fuck-ever wakes to find herself tied to something. It takes her about six seconds to break free, however, and with the aid of a conveniently-placed sharp object she stabs her assailant in the neck.

You know, if I were making my on-screen debut as a twisted, limb-chopping psychopath, I would not want my final image to look like this.



He knows who killed him and it's really surprising!

Dramatic obstacle resolved, Dakota Aubrey Dakota Lindsay Lohan stumbles back to the graveyard and digs up a random grave, where she finds...herself, looking like a fucked-up 1800s schoolteacher. She curls up next to this matronly version of herself and falls asleep as the moon shines silently upon these inexplicable proceedings.



End movie.

If you haven't been able to discern it by now, I Know Who Killed Me is an immeasurable disaster. Though it is too obscure to slay the careers of those involved, I can name at least one director and two screenwriters who will never be working in Hollywood again. And this certainly isn't an auspicious omen for several of the actors involved, not the least of which is poor Lindsay Lohan. It really is sad that this is what her star-studded cinematic path has led to; it will take boatloads of good will to get herself in a project half as good as this in the future.

People who do not make it out of this movie with their dignity intact:



Julia Ormond



Neal McDonough



Crab Man

I would have said LiLo herself, but really...did she have any dignity left when she signed on to this?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

So wait, did you like the movie?

Drew said...

In a way that you might like a helicopter full of confetti exploding. It's a disaster, but a damn awesome one.

Anonymous said...

I think she did have dignity, but that she just has no idea what the difference is between a good script and shit. Dumb people probably did think this was really deep.

And after reading this, I watched the sex scene (which had totally kickass music by the way) and found myself disappointed that the guy didn't do the "Driving the Backhoe" (where he plays make-believe that the females nubs for legs are gear shift on a tractor--complete with tractor noises, and beeping sounds when the male pulls out).

Smartie said...

Is that STEVEN KING explaining things? In that shot of the tv show? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I am SO going to download this schlockfest and put it on my PDA and watch it at work during lunchtimes so I can sit in the lunchroom and laugh and laugh and people will do their usual "She's fucked in the head" stare they give me. A lot.

And it's all your fault for writing such a pisser of a review!

I know who made me watch this!

Drew said...

Will: I think you actually may be half-right on the "deep" thing. When I went to rent this, I got the last copy of over 20. Granted, it was release day, but it was still alarming. I did actually like some of the music in the movie, but it was ALWAYS so out of context that it was distracting. The direction was hooooorrible. And though I'm sure you made up "driving the backhoe", I can't wait for it to catch on.

Smartie: A brief IMDB search indicates that Stephen King had nothing to do with the movie. It wouldn't have surprised me, but fortunately he kept himself unsullied.

Darius said...

LOL...I'll have to see this, just for the gratuitous cripple sex.

BeachGaBulldog said...

I was looking at a website and came across the word "torture porn". I went to Google Image, and typed this in. This led me to your site. This review was awesome. I hadn't heard of this movie, but it sounds like a real piece of shit.

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