| 90 |
Dallas Observer
Identity is an outright blast, so fun it's--pardon--scary.
|
| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
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.
|
| 88 |
ReelViews
What starts out as a seemingly-routine excursion into genre clichés emerges into a more complex and satisfying arena than most viewers will anticipate.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
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.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
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.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
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
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
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.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
Something fresh, clever and confident.
|
| 80 |
Salon.com
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.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
Far and away the most original thriller to come out of a major studio (in this case Columbia Pictures) in a long while.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
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.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
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.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
A slick, bloody thriller, but it's also, to its credit, a genuine whodunit.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
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.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
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.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
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.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Just loopy enough to be tantalizing, involving, and fun.
|
| 70 |
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.
|
| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
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.
|
| 67 |
Portland Oregonian
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.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
With moments of mind-bending creepiness, the film has potential, but eventually it devolves into merely a head-scratcher.
|
| 60 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Simultaneously a contrived piece of hokum and an absorbing, old-fashioned mystery.
|
| 60 |
Variety
Some fancy footwork in the writing and directing can't disguise the hoary "Ten Little Indians" origins of Identity.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
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.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
It's an exasperating exercise in B-movie hokum and screenwriter's gimmickry.
|
| 50 |
Premiere
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.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
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.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
The movie is polished, well-acted and atmospheric, but still pure formula, and not very scary, either.
|
| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Identity opens with its mind nicely intact, suffers a major crisis about 30 minutes in, then bad turns to worse.
|
| 50 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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.
|
| 40 |
Film Threat
Identity steams my broccoli big time and not just because its surprise twist is an insult to the intelligence of every audience member.
|
| 40 |
Slate
Suicidally insecure.
|
| 38 |
Charlotte Observer
The outcome is alternately unsatisfying, meaningless, contradictory and laughable.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
The ultimate cliché of plot-twist implausibility, the crucial revelation is so outlandishly fatuous it might have given Donald Kaufman pause.
|
