When you set your foot out in the big bad world of profession, you always put on your best suit, best attitude and the best smile.
That’s because you know WHO you are...
What happens when you are engulfed by an external source that controls you, provokes you and confuses your mind with pictures of someone else. You are being mentally monitored by an external mind that is not only stronger but more powerful and is willing you to do things that you will regret when in his power but forget when you are not. The the darkest corner of your mind will lurk up, trying to find the light and then when it does you turn around and ask…
Who am I??
One of the worst states of mind that you can be in ever. Not knowing the true self and yet identifying a face without a name or donning a face to identify with the name!!
IDENTITY
It’s a certainty that because you are called by a certain name and then you learn to attach your face to the name you know you are. But when you see a face that is not responding to a name then you are blown and your mind sends shocks of awe and fear through your body. It doesn’t respond to you but it responds to the name of a different face. Then horror strikes to make you realize that you have committed something that you wouldn’t when you had a different name attached to a different face.
A name to a face also identifies by means of sheer intelligence to the work that the body is accustomed to. The different face with a different name but the same body responds completely to the contrary. So much so that it can send cold chills of terror through your spines. The acts can be so gruesome that you may not be able to even identify the name attach it to a face and even worse the body might be different.
John Cussack and Ray Liotta lend us those spine chilling moments with the expertise of shifty eyes, sudden outbursts of sheer frustration and then a bone chilling silence that darts away in the dark corridors of the motel that they are shackled in.
Director Mangold of Cop Land, Girl Interrupted and Kate & Leopold proves that he can very tactfully tackle the horror stricken atmosphere with the same aplomb of what any Hitchcockian thriller would do to you but at the same time manages to raise the hair on your neck in complete silence that can get you to the edge of your seat. The film has some dull moments but that’s the respite that Directors have to offer the viewer as you need to get your balancing act between choosing the murderer from the lot shackled together and the axe that keeps falling on victims that you do not think would be brutally chopped.
Such is the deafening silence that follows each scene that as a viewer when you witness the fist scene of the film which incidentally begins with a heavy shower and a car traveling on a deserted road which leads to nowhere as the road has caved in and is flooded with water that you feel you may have actually entered a film that’s so clichéd!! But wait, when you see the attributes of characters that Mangold has in store for you…
A chauffer (John Cussack) and his has been actress of a woman that he drives around for his bread and butter, are caught in the rain and get completely stupefied with an accident that has occurred on the road. The nearest Hospital is about 45 miles and the road has caved in and flooded. No way out or in.
The car which has suffered the accident has a family of three, a husband who is second to the woman married twice and a son who has yet to come to terms with her mom’s second marriage. The husband is a worrier and soft spoken. Too soft to sound very very SPOOKY… They go to a motel where the injured mother is looked after and the chauffer turns out to be an efficient man and an ex cop too. Then there is a hooker (Amanda Peet), who has escaped with a load of cash stashed in her case and a car that has stalled on the same road with no way out or in…
The Motel is run by a very shifty man who suspects everyone and assists no one… The motel doesn’t have a single renter that night but suddenly has 10 in a span of less than an hour. Enter the cop who is transferring a warped criminal to the city 45 miles away and you have a very suspicious Ray Liotta and Bussey the criminal who add the chill to the entire entourage when they learn that the criminal has escaped!!
This is the twist that is delivered to you in about 15 minutes of running this very well lit (dark navy and misty backdrop with large unoccupied eerie areas and a laundry that keeps running even in the dead of the night) film for the gloom and thrill that your antennae are now up and you are sensing the inevitable scare of going ballistic with the blows that Mangold delivers. Imagine the fright when John and Ray find the actress body mangled in the laundry with the clothes and the machine is churning away in the dead of the night. The lady who has suffered the accident suddenly gets up feeling better and the next moment there is a bloody shriek from the hooker who finds a couple where the husband is lying on the floor of their room with a knife sticking out of his chest!!
10, 9, 8, 7… I am not learning counting backwards but this is the count of the murderer who is now closing in on all the residents of this deserted motel and then… Boom….
Mangold is certainly magical in delivering blow after blow of sheer horror filled with the extravagance of crime and foggy with the mystery of whodunit!! You will never be able to guess till the end as to who is the IDENTITY behind these murders. Emotions, conflict, suspicions and a sudden explosion and then the camera hurtling you in the dense darkness of the night with the patter of rainfall and then after the deafening silence… A loud blood chortling shriek!!!
This is not an ordinary film though it starts ordinarily and lulls you into a mood of hey I have seen this before… And the lull turns into a nightmare…
There are some factors that I have not mentioned here. But I have tried to psyche out the demeanour of the person who could do whatever to anyone, whenever!!
Please get your DVD now to get into the spirit of the Diwali Dhamaka. Only beware that this dhamaka is not nearly as loud as the crackers bursting but is as silent as the dark night that cracks a shriek like a silver lightening hurling at you from the dark sky!!
I am still thinking as to whodunit?? Later I will think about why? After wiping my sweat from my brow.