Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Identity
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Entertainment / Columbia Pictures
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 53 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Michael Cooney
Directed by: James Mangold
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 25, 2003
DVD: September 2, 2003
Running Time: 90 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence and language
Starring John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina, Clea DuVall, Rebecca De Mornay, John C. McGinley, and John Hawkes
Caught in a savage rainstorm, ten travelers are forced to seek refuge at a strange desert motel. They soon realize they've found anything but shelter. There is a killer among them and, one by one, they are murdered. (Sony)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: 3:10 to Yuma Cop Land Girl, Interrupted Kate & Leopold Walk the Line
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Identity is an outright blast, so fun it's--pardon--scary.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
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.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
What starts out as a seemingly-routine excursion into genre clichés emerges into a more complex and satisfying arena than most viewers will anticipate.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
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.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly John Powers
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
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
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.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
So ingeniously constructed that these meta-noir ingredients feel dizzyingly enjoyable, never hackneyed. In fact, the overheated melodrama of Identity is crucial to its method -- and the key, in some ways, to its narrative secrets.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Far and away the most original thriller to come out of a major studio (in this case Columbia Pictures) in a long while.
Read Full Review >New York Post Megan Lehmann
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.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A slick, bloody thriller, but it's also, to its credit, a genuine whodunit.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
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.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Just loopy enough to be tantalizing, involving, and fun.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Kevin Carr
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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The hardest work falls to Cusack, a subtle actor with a valuable gift for conveying the sadness and loneliness beneath the skin of even the most jaded and self-contained men-about-town.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
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.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
With moments of mind-bending creepiness, the film has potential, but eventually it devolves into merely a head-scratcher.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Simultaneously a contrived piece of hokum and an absorbing, old-fashioned mystery.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Some fancy footwork in the writing and directing can't disguise the hoary "Ten Little Indians" origins of Identity.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
It's an exasperating exercise in B-movie hokum and screenwriter's gimmickry.
Read Full Review >Premiere Peter Debruge
The tension's palpable and the deaths are gruesomely inventive (and jarringly abrupt), but the clincher is so far-fetched you may end up wishing you'd opted for the relative reality of a week in Cancun instead.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The puzzle pieces are all there. But when you put them all together, the result is a bit of a gyp — neat but utterly forgettable.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The movie is polished, well-acted and atmospheric, but still pure formula, and not very scary, either.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Identity opens with its mind nicely intact, suffers a major crisis about 30 minutes in, then bad turns to worse.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
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.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
Identity steams my broccoli big time and not just because its surprise twist is an insult to the intelligence of every audience member.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The outcome is alternately unsatisfying, meaningless, contradictory and laughable.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Dennis Lim
The ultimate cliché of plot-twist implausibility, the crucial revelation is so outlandishly fatuous it might have given Donald Kaufman pause.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 53 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Benjamin B. gave it an8:
The problem with this movie is that you don't get what you expect. If you expect a typical horror-mystery thriller, you will not become happy with this movie, because in the end it is almost a psychological study. So if you are open for genre-mixtures, you will get a good movie. I give it a 8, because for me it was too obvious who was the murderer.
Mike W. gave it a5:
Identity's first 30 minutes is quite well done, but the movie seems to crack under its own pressure. Relying on cliched plot twists, and a overall mediocre ending, ultimately Identity flushed a lot of great potential right down the toilet.
raVen gave it an 8:
(8.5) Black. Deep, deep black. I had previously thought - assumed - that the psych/thriller/horror/mystery depths had been plumbed to their limits with "Fallen" and the graphic "Se7en." But much more than either of those two films, "Identity" trumps physical violence with an even more effective cinematic noose: violence of the mind. And while the various violent sequences of the movie arouse the predictable and primal gut reaction expected from this tool, the true power -and horror- of the movie lies in the fact that each of these episodes are subservient to a greater, even more horrifying event. We are left then, uniquely, to worry less about how awful it might feel to be stabbed or shot, and more about what it must be to be completely out of one's mind. There is no way we'll ever know just how accurate Identity's interpretation of this mindset is, but it certainly gives one pause... Not to mention the need for a nice, cheery cartoon afterwards.
Andrew M. gave it an 8:
As a suspense/thriller, this is very very good. Great direction. I didn't actually like the ending (in terms of was it what I wanted to see) but it was well done, and certainly original. I bought this on dvd before seeing it and now I'm quite happy that I own it. Good film.
F. S. gave it an 8:
Really good, ENDING was awesome.
Marc-o gave it a 7:
Unpredictable and clever , i thinks thats how one critic described the first jeepers Creepers film only this is good the whole way through, good cast too. hard to take that the guy who wrote this was responsabile for Jack frost 2: Return of the mutant killer snowman Wierd.
Pat C. gave it a 3:
It's a bloodbath. The Nevada Chain Lightning Massacre. The motorists are stock characters, the murderer has a screw loose, but it's the one who thought we'd find these people interesting that is raving insane. Sorry, but you rained on your own parade.
