FilmBlather.com

"There's a storm, and we couldn't get out, we couldn't get out because of the storm."

The supreme joy of going to the movies, as far as I am concerned, is to be surprised, to have one's expectations mocked, toyed with and confounded. Movies like Identity are so rare. Most thrillers are stuck in an inflexible formula structure, following a linear path from point A to point B and ending in a big hug. This one begins as "Ten Little Indians" in a flooded-off motel and ends as something entirely different, at one point hairpinning in a direction at which the advertising didn't even hint.

The film begins, oddly, at a hearing to stay the execution of a convicted killer. It then begins to circularly tell the stories of the ten strangers who would wind up stranded at a secluded motel in the middle of a rainstorm. There's an accident on the road. A woman named Alice York (Leila Kenzle) is seriously injured, which sends her husband George (John C. McGinley) into a panic, and their son Tim (Bret Loehr) into a silent tizzy. The driver who hit Alice is Ed (John Cusack) is a cop-turned-chauffeur who is driving a conceited, burned-out movie star Caroline Suzanne (Rebecca DeMornay). They all drive to the closest shelter, which happens to be the motel in question, attended by the shady but amiable Larry (John Hawkes).

While they're stitching up Alice, five more people show up. Lou (Willam Lee Scott) and Ginny (Clea DuVall) are a pair of newlyweds scared to drive any further. Rhodes (Ray Liotta) is a cop transporting a prisoner (Jake Busey). Paris (Amanda Peet) is a prostitute who has quit the business and is driving to Florida to retire in an orange grove.

The prisoner escapes his not terribly secure confinement (he's handcuffed to a toilet). People start dying in gruesome ways, one by one, with a numbered motel keychain always found by the bodies, forming a chilling countdown: there are ten rooms, the first victim gets number 10, the next one 9 and so forth. Then, as the trailer gives away, the bodies disappear.

That's the set-up, and this is not a whodunit in any conventional sense. It's a mystery, yes, and the film provides clues to its solution, but said solution is so odd, unexpected and outrageous that it shattered the criticisms I had come up with over the preceding hour. Identity puts itself on the spot by proposing such a bizarre plot twist, risks looking ridiculous (and judging by comments I've heard and read, it does in fact look ridiculous to some). But it is executed with such conviction that I moved past its absurdity and accepted it as an ingenious plot device. We don't really get time to question it, anyway.

Identity contains at least two surprises of the best kind -- once they are unveiled, we realize that the script has been preparing us for them and that we should have anticipated them. The hints dropped by screenwriter Michael Cooney suddenly become so obvious that I berated myself for missing them, and yet I did, carried along by the furiously-paced storytelling. And that final shot is just a treasure, as the movie grinds to a halt before we can conclude that it's about to do so. The film's last act is like the free-fall section of a roller coaster, and the credits roll at the very bottom.

Part of the reason why I embraced this movie so wholeheartedly, I think, is the beautiful feint that is its first hour. Identity plays genre thriller so convincingly, that when the story made its strange left turn, I was completely blindsided. If this were to be the beginning of a trend, I suppose it would get old pretty fast, but since this kind of thing is never done, I was very appreciative of the audacity that the film exhibited.

Identity will be widely criticized for the alleged "stupidity" of its resolution. And it is stupid when applied to the real world, in the way that the concept of just about any horror movie can be labeled stupid. But it makes sense within the film's self-contained universe, and I much prefer its cheerful absurdity over the boring polish of the countless, endless conventional Hollywood actioners.