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Identity
Sony Pictures Entertainment / Columbia Pictures


7.0

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 51 votes
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FILM:

MPAA 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)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Michael Cooney
DIRECTED BY:	James Mangold
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 2, 2003 Video: December 31, 1969 Theatrical: April 25, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	90 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Something fresh, clever and confident.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A slick, bloody thriller, but it's also, to its credit, a genuine whodunit.

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.

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.

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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Just loopy enough to be tantalizing, involving, and fun.

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.

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.

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.

USA Today Claudia Puig

With moments of mind-bending creepiness, the film has potential, but eventually it devolves into merely a head-scratcher.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Simultaneously a contrived piece of hokum and an absorbing, old-fashioned mystery.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Some fancy footwork in the writing and directing can't disguise the hoary "Ten Little Indians" origins of Identity.

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.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

It's an exasperating exercise in B-movie hokum and screenwriter's gimmickry.

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.

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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie is polished, well-acted and atmospheric, but still pure formula, and not very scary, either.

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.

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.

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.

Slate David Edelstein

Suicidally insecure.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The outcome is alternately unsatisfying, meaningless, contradictory and laughable.

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 51 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.

Identity Sony Pictures Entertainment / Columbia Pictures

Identity
Sony Pictures Entertainment / Columbia Pictures