I Know Who Killed Me
I Know Who Killed Me is a 2007 American psychological thriller film directed by Chris Sivertson, written by Jeff Hammond, and starring Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough and Brian Geraghty. The film's story revolves around a young woman who is abducted and tortured by a sadistic serial killer. After surviving the abduction, she insists that her identity is that of another woman.
I Know Who Killed Me
Jeff Hammond
Frank Mancuso Jr.
David Grace
Lawrence Jordan
360 Pictures
Sony Pictures Releasing (United States)
Summit Entertainment (International)[1]
- July 27, 2007
106 minutes
United States
English
$9.7 million[2]
I Know Who Killed Me was released by TriStar Pictures on July 27, 2007. The film received intense negative media coverage during production and upon its release, as Lohan publicly struggled with addiction and other personal issues. It was promptly deemed a failure and called one of the worst films ever made, being the most awarded at the 28th Golden Raspberry Awards, winning seven of eight nominations. It did, however, attain a more successful home video performance, having almost quadrupled its U.S. box office gross in estimated domestic DVD sales. The film subsequently developed a cult following that has reexamined it as a modern giallo and several screenings of it have been put together by historic theaters and film festivals.
Plot[edit]
The quiet suburb of New Salem is being terrorized by a serial killer who abducts and tortures young women, holding them captive for weeks before murdering them. Aubrey Fleming, a pianist and aspiring writer, appears to be his latest victim when she disappears during a night out with her friends. She is later seen bound and gagged on an operating table as her hands are exposed to dry ice. As the days tick by, the special FBI Task Force convened to track the killer begins to lose hope of finding him before it's too late.
Late one night, a driver discovers a young woman by the side of a deserted road, disheveled and seriously wounded, with one of her hands and legs amputated. The girl, who looks identical to Aubrey, is rushed to the hospital, where Aubrey's distraught parents, Susan and Daniel, wait by her side as she slips in and out of consciousness. When she is finally able to speak, she shocks everyone by claiming to be a down-on-her-luck stripper named Dakota Moss. Convinced Aubrey is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, her doctors, parents, and law enforcement officials can only wait for rest and therapy to restore her memory. But after returning to her parents' suburban home, she continues to insist she is not who they think she is.
An FBI psychologist believes Dakota to be a delusional persona of Aubrey, and the agents speculate the persona functions to distance and protect Aubrey from the events that happened. Examining Aubrey's laptop, they discover a short story about a girl with an identical twin sister named Dakota. In addition, a DNA test confirms that Dakota is Aubrey. Nonetheless, Dakota explains away her injuries to the police, recollecting a series of bizarre events that happened before she arrived in town. She begins to suspect she may be Aubrey's identical twin sister and comes to believe her injuries are sympathetic resonance with her twin's wounds, manifesting in a stigmata-like fashion. However, Susan shows Dakota a video of her pregnancy ultrasound clearly revealing there was only one fetus in her womb. Dakota confronts Daniel, who eventually admits that his and Susan's child died shortly after birth and that he informally adopted Aubrey from Virginia Sue Moss (another character that appears in Aubrey's short story), a crack addict who bore twin daughters — one of whom was Dakota, who was left to be raised by her biological mother. Susan has remained unaware of this for all of Aubrey's life.
Confused and terrified, Dakota starts seeing visions of a menacing figure slowly butchering his captive. One of these visions leads her to a nearby cemetery. After investigating the grave of Aubrey's recently murdered friend, Jennifer Toland, Dakota finds a blue ribbon from a piano competition, with a message from Jennifer's (and Aubrey's) piano teacher, Douglas Norquist. She is followed by Daniel, and declares, "I know who killed me."
The two go, without FBI backup, to Norquist's home to confront him. Daniel heads into the house alone, leaving a panicking Dakota in the car. Attempting to calm herself, Dakota calls out to her twin, Aubrey, who is buried, to keep breathing slowly, as their lives are linked together. Dakota enters the house, attacks Norquist in self-defense, and cuts his hand off. She finds Daniel on the verge of death, having been clearly overpowered by Norquist. Dakota is also overpowered and tied up. Confused, Norquist asks why she has returned and exclaims that he buried her (referencing an earlier vision Dakota had). Dakota frees herself, kills Norquist, and heads into the nearby wood, finding where he supposedly buried Aubrey alive. Using her prosthetic hand, she smashes the front of the glass coffin that Norquist buried Aubrey in, revealing her barely alive in a white dress. This seemingly verifies Dakota's version of events. Relieved to have found and rescued her long-lost twin, Dakota lies on the ground next to her.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The film premiered on July 27, 2007, to $3.5 million from 1,320 theaters, finishing ninth at the box office for that weekend but third among new releases,[21] eventually grossing a total of $7.5 million by the end of its theatrical run in the United States. It ultimately grossed $9.7 million worldwide.[2]
Critical reception[edit]
The film was not screened in advance for critics.[22] Rotten Tomatoes reports a 9% approval rating based on 78 reviews, with an average rating of 2.90/10. The website's consensus reads: "Distasteful and ludicrously plotted, I Know Who Killed Me is a career nadir for all involved – particularly Lindsay Lohan in a dual role".[23] On Metacritic, it holds a 16/100 rating based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".[24] CinemaScore audience polling gave the film a rare average grade of "F".[25]
Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter said "There's a fresh candidate in the running for worst movie of 2007 honours. "I Know Who Killed Me", a ridiculous thriller (minus the thrills) starring the embattled Lindsay Lohan in a dual role, has all the hallmarks necessary for qualification: A nonsensical plot that grows sillier by the second, tawdry special effects, heavy-handed symbolism that's big on electric-blue hues and mechanical performances are all culprits as far as the title's concerned."[26]
Empire Online named it number thirty-four in a fan-voted "50 Worst Movies List", saying "Remember how great Lindsay Lohan was in Mean Girls? Or Freaky Friday, or The Parent Trap? Well, if you do, be sure never to watch this, because it will spoil those memories forever. We could forgive Lohan for wanting to make a racier, adult thriller. If only it were thrilling."[27] It was also on MRQE's 50 Worst Movies list.[28][29]
The film did receive some positive reviews. Fangoria praised the film's imaginative use of color, saying "[T]he director and his visual team bathe the film in deep blues and reds, a welcome departure from the dirty green, sodium-lit palette of similarly themed horror fare, and the end result is simply a beautiful, eye-popping visual treat, so stylized that one can't help recalling Argento's approach to Suspiria."[30] The Radio Times also alluded to the director "recalling the style of Dario Argento" in a "twisty, perversely fascinating psycho thriller."[31]
The horror-movie website Bloody Disgusting gave the film a glowing review and suggested that, "Lohan's continual issues with drugs/alcohol/DUI’s/rehab/on-set bitchiness" were part of a "whirlwind of media frenzy" that was unnecessary and "irrelevant to the movie". The film itself was "a more-than-pleasant surprise, well-filmed, well-acted, especially by Lohan herself, and a surprisingly intriguing and gruesome little thriller."[32] Boston Globe critic Ty Burr compared the film favorably to Brian de Palma's Sisters and Body Double, as well as the works of David Lynch.[33]
Legacy[edit]
Years after its release, I Know Who Killed Me came to achieve cult status and was called a "midnight movie", as acknowledged by Sivertson during an interview in October 2019: "It definitely has. And the thing with that movie is it was so fast that I wasn't really conscious of any of that. We wrapped production in March, and then we were in theaters in July. [...] For a studio movie, that's super quick. My head was just so down buried in the thing. And yeah, I'm glad that it’s lived on in infamy or however people want to take it. If people are talking about it, I think that's good," and pondered about a possible director's cut release.[20]
The film had frequently received screenings including at the Nuart Theatre, the Brattle Theatre, 92YTribeca, the 2013 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with the latter describing it as "deliriously, at times jaw-droppingly, perverse—exerting a strange fascination as a twisted mirror reflection of its troubled starlet's own downward spiral."[34][35][36][37][38]
In March 2020, film critic William Bibbiani claimed: "I Know Who Killed Me is criminally misunderstood. It's not a classic, but it's an enjoyably strange giallo that doesn't deserve its terrible rep, and demands a serious reevaluation."[39] Chicago's Music Box called it "an overlooked American giallo that earns the title in several ways"[40] while Iowa City's FilmScene characterized it as "a stylish Argento-influenced giallo which was savaged by critics and misunderstood by audiences in its initial release."[41] In January 2021, Charles Bramesco of The Guardian wrote that "this widely, wrongly maligned film has been embraced by a growing mini-cult attuned to its aesthetic of surreal artifice and grim interplay with real life." He continued, "the baggage [Lohan] dropped off at set only served to deepen and enrich the subtext of a stealth noir gem, one that gestures to a long-bygone era of movie stardom through the framework of a cheaper and dirtier sort of serial killer thriller," and that, "As a girl next door seemingly transformed overnight into a vamp with a cigarette-rasped voice and formidable pole-dancing prowess, she brings the thought experiment of “what if Barbara Stanwyck had been fed through Disney's wringer as a child?” to life in exhilarating fashion."[13] While reexamining it for Splice Today, John Kidwell expressed that "on a metatextual level—specifically, as a film about the child star's painful transformation into sex symbol—I Know Who Killed Me is surprisingly self-aware and, at times, even intelligent."[42]
In October 2021, Screen Slate announced they would be screening I Know Who Killed Me for its annual Scream Slate at the Roxy Cinema Tribeca and considered "modern audiences have also found it to be a genuinely thrilling example of a film that dares to be stylish, oblique, and extremely weird, like a sleazy update of Italian gialli plopped into the 2007 summer blockbuster season," adding that, "In further light of reevaluation of the way young women stars were mistreated and publicly vilified at the time, I Know Who Killed Me is a fascinating lens through which to revisit the 2000s."[43][44][45] That same month, screenwriter Jeff Hammond was interviewed about the film's newfound popularity and legacy, analyzing, "Its contradictions exist on multiple levels and most of them were intentional. It has campy elements and it has serious elements," and praised Lohan's dual performance, "You can feel how different they are from each other [...] I think it's a great performance. She is a spectacularly gifted actor". Elaborating on the film's negative reception, he stated, "It seemed like the world had it in for her. It was ugly. Our movie was collateral damage. [...] Do you think we would have won all those Razzies with any other Aubrey/Dakota but her?" He concluded, "Even its harshest critics would have to admit that [I Know Who Killed Me] wears its badge of oddness honestly. And I think that's part of the reason why people are still talking about it all these years later," and contemplated writing a sequel, "I've been catching myself pondering the fate that might await Aubrey and Dakota as adults."[46]
In 2022, Lohan also reminisced about taking on the project in an interview with Vogue: "That was really fun to do. It was my first step into doing something different and dark, which was really exciting."[47] In 2023, Cinematic Void included the film in their annual January Giallo series with multiple screenings across the US.[48] On January 30, the American Cinematheque held a Q&A session with Sivertson after a sold out presentation of the film in Los Angeles.[49] In October 2023, IndieWire named I Know Who Killed Me one of the best giallo movies of all time, asserting that "the movie holds up as a shockingly scary and stylish watch today" after being "divorced from [the] vicious media spectacle" it was subjected around its release, as "the premise makes for a twisty, genuinely surprising mystery, and Sivertson's direction is crisp, stylish, and always weird."[50]
Home media[edit]
The DVD and Blu-ray versions were released on November 27, 2007. The art cover of the DVD shows Lohan, in blue, pole-dancing, with the faces of her alter egos Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss on either side.[51][52] Among the extras are alternate opening and ending scenes with the latter showing that the entire plot was actually written by the Aubrey character.[8] Other extras include an extended version of Lohan's strip dance at the club and bloopers. By January, the DVD had grossed $11.99 million.[53] The Region 2 DVD was released January 28, 2008, with different cover art showing a close-up of Lohan, in red, doing her pole-dance at the strip club.[54] In the United States, the film has grossed over $28 million in estimated DVD sales.[55] A Walmart exclusive Bonus Disc DVD was also included upon release, featuring two short documentaries with cast and crew interviews.[56]