Seems like up is down and red is blue.

"I Know Who Killed Me" (2007)

STARRING: Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough

PLOT: When Aubrey Fleming goes missing, the town suspects a serial killer has abducted her. When she is miraculously found alive, mutilated and unconscious on the side of a country road, she has no memory of her life, insisting that her real name is Dakota Moss. Is Aubrey a victim of her own fractured mind, or is there truth to her unbelievable claim? She must solve the mystery before her torturer returns to finish the job...

IN TWO WORDS: RED! BLUE!

MY TAKE: It should come as little surprise that this movie has an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes rating and has been universally panned by critics. Chances are you didn't see it. Chances are you rolled your eyes at the commercials, because -- let's face it -- this is a Lindsay Lohan movie. Critics are people too, and by the time this movie hit theaters in 2007, people everywhere were fed up with the lead starlet's off-screen antics. Nobody wanted to support a self-indulgent brat by paying to see this, and those that did see it seemed to let their opinions of Lohan's public life color their impression of this film. It's a shame that most critics decided to lock arms and steamroll this flick into the dirt, because -- believe it or not -- this movie is actually decent. In fact, I'm shocked to admit, it's pretty darn good.

Lindsay's as shocked as you are!

Like most people, I'd dismissed this flick entirely. But when I heard it referred to as an "American giallo" by the Dead Lantern Splattercast, I was intrigued. When it comes to horror movies, those guys seriously know their shit, and when they recommended I give it a shot, I decided to take their advice. I'm glad I did. The comparison to Italian gialli is an appropriate one -- to call this an American interpretation of the giallo style is absolutely spot-on. That's exactly what this is. I Know Who Killed Me is saturated with color and symbolism, vibrant reds and blues tinting every frame of the movie. Heavy with symbolism and repeated images, this flick is also heavy-handed with the blood and gore. A slasher killer, a psychological mystery, and though Lohan herself doesn't go nude, there are multiple scenes featuring female nudity. I'm stumped to think of a recent movie that evokes the giallo style more than this one.

The film follows a girl named Aubrey Fleming. She's a bright student, a writer, and an accomplished pianist. Aubrey is looking forward to college, and spends the majority of her time studying and writing fiction on her computer. She lives in an idyllic town, has a boyfriend who is nuts about her, and a family who loves her. But everything is not as picture-perfect as it appears. A fellow student in her class was recently murdered, her drowned corpse found horribly mutilated. The press wants to run with a serial killer story, but the cops are fighting to keep it hushed up. But when star student Aubrey vanishes one night, people's worst fears are confirmed. Someone is abducting and killing girls, keeping them alive while he or she whittles them down one limb at a time. The authorities fear the worst for Aubrey, and everyone is amazed when she is found alive.

Alive... but not altogether whole.

Aubrey has no memory of her life. She doesn't know her parents or friends and insists that she is someone named Dakota Moss. Interrogated by police and medical professionals, everyone believes Aubrey has lost her grip on reality. Everyone, that is, except Dakota. She is in every way a different person than Aubrey. A smoker, a drinker, and a former exotic dancer, Dakota shocks her loved ones with her foul language and bad attitude. The FBI is convinced she's stonewalling, hindering their investigation by refusing to tell what little of the incident she remembers. Her family refuses to indulge Aubrey's delusion that she is Dakota, insistent that if she returns home, her fractured memory will return. Dakota plays along and returns to Aubrey's home, picking up Aubrey's life where she left it, all the while determined to figure out what happened.

When strange, seemingly paranormal occurrences and visions begin to plague Dakota, the audience is thrown off track. What appears at first to be a straightforward tale of mistaken identity quickly becomes something else. Even if you're convinced you know what's going on and who is responsible, like any good giallo, you won't know the full story until the end of the film.

Who is Dakota? Who is Aubrey? What the hell is going on?

I really liked this. While certainly not for everyone, especially people who hate Lohan or find graphic gore distasteful, I think most people would be surprised how decent this flick is. The mystery is intriguing, and the film is gorgeous to look at. Of course, it does have its problems. Lohan's harsh black dye-job and spray-on tan are distracting to say the least, and I spent the majority of the film wanting to hold her down and scrub her head till she looked somewhat natural. She is a beautiful girl, and she shows a lot of skin as Dakota. There are multiple strip club dance scenes, but the fact that she never once gets topless while working the stripper pole is a little hard to swallow. Fun to watch, but if you're gonna convince an audience you're a world-weary exotic dancer, nipples are almost a necessity. Come on, Lindsay! We've seen 'em in magazines, why hold out when you're playing a stripper?

Other gripes are small, but worth mentioning. Aubrey's high school boyfriend was flat-out terrible. I find it hard to believe that bright, intelligent Aubrey she would waste her time on a lunkheaded dolt like Jarrod. She refuses to have sex with him, so clearly it's not a phsyical thing, and he's not especially attractive in any way. Are we to believe they have deep, meaningful conversations whenever they're off-screen together? Whether this is bad casting or poor writing (or a combination of the two), I don't know. I think the boyfriend is only in the movie as a device to see some raunchy amputee-sex, and hey, I guess I can get behind that. But he's still dull as a bag of hair, and we all know Lindsay could score someone much better looking. Other things like the laughable robotic hand and Darnell from My Name Is Earl as the utterly unconvincing prosthetic scientist leap to mind, but the lasting impression this movie made wasn't how much it sucked, but how much it didn't suck.

Plus, you know, there's a lot of this.

Of all the things to bitch about in I Know Who Killed Me, the one person I can't fault is the one person that incurred the wrath of audiences and critics alike -- Lindsay Lohan. She's really great in this, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. She convincingly plays the dual roles of Aubrey and Dakota, and she carries almost every single scene of the movie by herself. I thought it would be difficult to separate her infamous party-girl image from the characters she played, but she made it easy. Whether most people would like to admit it, Lohan is a talented actress. It's clear that she loves acting, and I sincerely hope she sorts her shit out so that she can continue to act. When the movie was over, I found myself thinking favorably of her and feeling guilty that I'd judged her so harshly as an artist based on anything but her art. So don't let your opinion of Lindsay Lohan's partying ways prevent you from seeing I Know Who Killed Me. Take my advice -- it's worth a shot. This movie tries many things you don't usually see in American horror movies, and for that I have to give it props.

ON A SCALE OF 1-10: A delightfully twisted American giallo! 7!

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