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They all have the same birthday. “Why?” you might
ask. “I need to know!!” Well, actually, you don’t. Identity
makes for one hell of a suspenseful trailer; there’s no two
ways about that. But the actual film suffers by comparison.
A flood and power outage trap 10 strangers in a hotel for
the night. Who they are and how they got there hardly matters;
the characters are all stock types from different walks of
life who unwillingly come together to deal with a difficult
situation. Of course, so were those seven brave souls who
fatefully set sail on the S.S. Minnow so many years
ago. But the major difference between Identity and
“Gilligan’s Island” is that in the former people quickly start
turning up dead. Spookifying matters greatly is the fact that
a hotel key is left on or near each corpse. The first key
does not have the number of the victim’s room, but the number
10; subsequent keys count down from there. As the guests try
to protect themselves and identify the killer, retired cop
Ed (Cusack) quickly becomes the leader of the group,
which includes hooker with a heart of gold Paris (Peet),
neurotic family man George (McGinley), and Larry, the
shifty hotel clerk (Hawkes). Rhodes (Liotta),
an actual, current police officer, is miffed at Ed’s authority,
but has his hands full keeping tabs on the convicted murderer
(chip off the old block Busey) he is charged with transporting.
While some of the deaths seem so improbable as to suggest
coincidence or accident, the mounting body count leads the
guests to believe that someone is murdering them. What is
good about Identity is that, for most of the film,
the audience is never quite sure if the killer is a normal
red-blooded American axe-murderer type, or something much
more eerie and supernatural. This device cranks up what minimal
scares the movie offers, and makes the killer’s identity far
from obvious. As a horror movie, Identity is passable
but mediocre. It offers some moments of genuine suspense,
but not that many.
But as a psychological thriller, Identity is not even
that good. The film’s central conceit in this category
is the hint that perhaps our heroes were not randomly brought
together, but that instead the whole evening was masterminded
by some evil genius. This motif, so prominent in the trailer,
receives minimal screen time, and really is not that central
at all. The requisite “twist” near the end, while radical
in its implications for the story, feels neither new nor interesting.
Identity is lackluster but not terrible; interesting
enough but not memorable. The preview, on the other hand,
is a masterpiece, and it’s free.
—Mike O’Connor
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out of 5
While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
