CRITICS REVIEWS
IDENTITY
JAMES MANGOLD
United States, 2003
Identity is an outright blast, so fun it's--pardon--scary.
ROBERT WILONSKY
What starts out as a seemingly-routine excursion into genre clichés emerges into a more complex and satisfying arena than most viewers will anticipate.
JAMES BERARDINALLI
The film mixes the psychological with the supernatural, the profane with the ridiculous, the self-indulgent with the understated, and dares you to assume anything. It's all great fun.
CHRIS KALTENBACH
Cooney's achingly clever script has more up its sleeve than just Agatha Christie -- he also evokes "Psycho," "The Sixth Sense," "Poltergeist" and "The Omen" -- and the final third dishes up a twist that isn't just surprising, it's revealing
JOHN POWERS
Far and away the most original thriller to come out of a major studio (in this case Columbia Pictures) in a long while.
MARK SAVLOV
Cusack is especially good in a role that's got more (and less) going on under the surface, while Peet offers up another coltish, trash-mouthed vamp.
STEVEN REA
A slick, bloody thriller, but it's also, to its credit, a genuine whodunit.
MICHAEL WILMINGTON
A fascinating movie that, if you are able to make the leap it asks of you at about the three-quarter mark, will give you something to think and talk about for days. One thing is certain: It isn't predictable.
JACK MATHEWS
A rarity, a movie that seems to be on autopilot for the first two acts and then reveals that it was not, with a third act that causes us to rethink everything that has gone before. Ingenious, how simple and yet how devious the solution is.
ROGER EBERT
The violence and mayhem are constant, though the movie's style is refreshingly old-fashioned -- scream- and laughter-inducing, rather than coldly repulsive in the modern fashion.
MICK LASALLE
April 25, 2003
April 25, 2003
Managed to pull the rug out from under me about three-quarters of the way through, and I still hadn't found my feet when the credits rolled.
J.R JONES
Approaches the serial killer archetype in a tremendously unique way. It turns the old stand-bys on their ears and gives a fresh perspective on the genre.
KEVIN CARR
Simultaneously a contrived piece of hokum and an absorbing, old-fashioned mystery
NATHAN RABIN
It's gory, it's bleak, it's shamelessly tricky -- and it's also a good deal more fun than it had any right to be.
SHAWN LEVY
With moments of mind-bending creepiness, the film has potential, but eventually it devolves into merely a head-scratcher.
CLAUDIA PUIG
April 28, 2003
April 28, 2003
It's an exasperating exercise in B-movie hokum and screenwriter's gimmickry.
WESLEY MORRIS
Some fancy footwork in the writing and directing can't disguise the hoary "Ten Little Indians" origins of Identity.
TODD MCCARTHY
October 27, 2014
October 27, 2014
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.
DANA STEVENS
April 25, 2003
April 25, 2003
Builds steadily from its smarter-than-your-average-horror-film beginnings to a genuinely cunning psychological thriller with a third-act twist guaranteed to shock even the most eagle-eyed watchers.
MEGAN LEHMANN
Fine escapist fare with a saving sense of humor and an underlying premise that, when revealed, proves to be arguably plausible even if a reach.
KEVIN THOMAS
Identity opens with its mind nicely intact, suffers a major crisis about 30 minutes in, then bad turns to worse.
RICK GROEN
When its big plot switcheroo comes, it proves to be not such a great idea after all: It actually weakens, rather than strengthens, the premise, and dissipates, rather than intensifies, the drama.
WILLIAM ARNOLD
April 24, 2003
April 24, 2003
The movie is polished, well-acted and atmospheric, but still pure formula, and not very scary, either.
RENE RODRIGUEZ
It's not art, but it's fun artfully done. And as long as you're paying less than the price of a cheapo motel for the night, it's worth checking into.
DESSON THOMSON