Identity is a reasonably well-executed thriller. It suffers not from awkwardness or silliness, which would make it more fun, but rather from its air-brushed, expensive pretentiousness. Like last year's Panic Room, the springtime box-office success of which Sony may be hoping to repeat, Identity is a dressed-up B picture, a hunk of cheese trying to sneak into the gourmet food aisle of the supermarket.
The cheap grubbiness that was always the hallmark of the best horror movies, and that survives in straighforwardly exploitative pictures like the recent Final Destination 2, is missing from preening high-concept movies like this one and the disastrous Dreamcatcher.
Mangold acquits himself much better than Lawrence Kasdan did in that nightmare, and Identity is not terrible by any means, but there is nonetheless something depressing about seeing so many interesting actors stuffed into such an empty, ersatz vehicle.
RSS