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
Theatrical release poster
Directed byChris Sivertson
Produced byFrank Mancuso Jr.
David Grace
Written byJeff Hammond
StarringLindsay Lohan
Julia Ormond
Neal McDonough
Brian Geraghty
Music byJoel McNeely
CinematographyJohn R. Leonetti
Edited byLawrence Jordan
Production
company
360 Pictures
Distributed byTriStar Pictures
Release date
  • July 27, 2007 (2007-07-27)
Running time
106 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$12 million
Box office$9.7 million

I Know Who Killed Me was released by TriStar Pictures on July 27, 2007, and was deemed a critical and commercial box office failure and it has since been called one of the worst films ever made. The film was the most awarded at the 28th Golden Raspberry Awards, winning eight of nine nominations, including Worst Picture and Lohan tying with herself to win Worst Actress as well as Worst Screen Couple for both characters she portrayed. 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 and several screenings of it have been put together by historic theaters and film festivals.

Plot

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 critically injured. The girl 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, who has never heard of Aubrey Fleming. 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, despite bearing bizarre wounds identical to those of the serial killer's previous victims, which include her hand and half of her leg cut off.

An FBI psychologist believes Dakota to be a delusional persona of Aubrey, and the agents speculate the persona is 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.

Unaware of this, Dakota explains away her injuries as various 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, 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 then confronts Daniel and asserts Susan's child died shortly after birth, and that Daniel took Aubrey from Virginia Sue Moss (another character from Aubrey's short story), a crack addict, leaving her with Dakota to raise alone.

Confused and terrified, Dakota starts seeing visions of a menacing figure slowly butchering his captive. One of these visions takes Dakota 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 Norquist's house alone leaving a panicking Dakota in the car alone. Attempting to calm herself, Dakota refers to herself as Aubrey. Daniel is seemingly overpowered, and it is implied killed, by Norquist. Dakota, having entered the house, attacks Norquist in self-defense and cuts his hand off before being overpowered and tied up. Confused, Norquist asks why she has returned and exclaimed he had buried her (referencing an earlier vision Dakota had). Freeing herself, Dakota kills Norquist and heads into the nearby wood, finding where Norquist had supposedly buried Aubrey alive. Using her prosthetic hand, she smashes the front of the glass coffin that Norquist had buried Aubrey in, revealing her barely alive in a white dress. This seemingly verifies Dakota's version of events and relieved to have found her long-lost twin, Dakota lies on the ground next to her.

Cast

Production

Before filming, Lohan took pole-dancing lessons to prepare for her role as a stripper, stating: "I've been in pole dancing lessons, S Factor by Sheila Kelley, every day for four hours. I have bruises all over."[1] Filming dates took place between December 2006 and March 2007. Principal photography was mostly held in California. In the first week of production, filming was halted after Lohan was hospitalized, her representative saying "she was overheated and dehydrated."[2] Production stayed halted soon after as Lohan underwent appendix surgery.[3][4][5] Filming was soon then delayed even longer after the incision was infected and the filmmakers were waiting for a doctor's approval for Lohan to continue working.[6] This all occurred around the same time Lohan admitted herself to the Wonderland Center rehabilitation facility for a 30-day stay.[7][8] During the stay she continued shooting the film, returning to the facility at night.[9][10] Sivertson claimed that production "never lost any shooting days because of rehab," with Lohan declaring she drew from what she was personally experiencing to tackle some of the film's darker themes.[11] Because of all the media attention Lohan was receiving, she could not even walk to her trailer without the paparazzi photographing her, sometimes they would even end up in the background of some shots of the film.[6]

Sivertson talked about his experience directing the film saying, "I was happy as hell to get my hands on the script. It's exactly the kind of thing I'm into. Stylistically I guess you could say the influence is Hitchcock filtered through De Palma and Lynch. There were echoes of some of my favorite movies in the script - stuff like Vertigo, Dressed to Kill, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet," continuing that he wanted the movie "to play both as a dark psychological thriller and as a surreal fairy tale. I went for a very bright poppy look with saturated colors, particularly blues and reds." He concluded, "Love it or hate it, it's stuff that I wanted to see on the big screen and now I can. That makes me happy."[12] In 2019, Sivertson revealed the existence of a three and a half hour-long director's cut, disclosing, "[...] To a lot of people it doesn’t make sense. And there were a lot of plot scenes, especially a lot of investigative FBI stuff that were just totally cut out of the movie. [...] I was more interested at the time with just the weirdness of it all."[13] Siverston stated about casting Lohan: "We needed someone who could play complete opposites... but not in a clichéd way. The movie really rests on Lindsay's shoulders." Likewise, producer Mancuso Jr.'s only concern in casting Lohan was whether the actress, best known for roles in family comedies and teen flicks, could continue making the transition and play more adult-oriented characters, admitting, "It was a risk, but it didn't scare me because I felt like she wouldn't do this unless she was willing to go for it."[11]

In July 2007, Lohan was arrested for driving under the influence, which prevented her from doing promotion for the film. She even had to withdraw from a scheduled appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in which she had been due to promote its release.[14][15][16][17][18]

Reception

Box office

The film premiered on July 27, 2007, to what Entertainment Weekly called "an abysmal $3.5 million"[19] from 1,320 theaters, finishing ninth at the box office for that weekend but third among new releases,[20] 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.[21]

Critical reception

The film was not screened in advance for critics.[22] Rotten Tomatoes reports a 9% approval rating based on 77 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 an F;[25] as of April 2020, it is one of only 22 films to receive such a rating.

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] Richard Roeper ranked it number one on his "Worst movies of 2007" list; a few years later, Roeper named it the worst film of the 2000s. It was also on MRQE's 50 Worst Movies list.[28][29]

The film did receive some positive reviews. Fangoria praises 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 BloodyDisgusting.com 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

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.[13] The film has 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] 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."[40]

Home media

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.[41][42] Among the extras are alternate opening and ending scenes with the latter showing that the entire plot was actually written by the Aubrey character. However, test audiences allegedly thought this ending was too predictable, so it was cut from the film.[6] 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.[43] 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.[44] In the United States, the film has grossed over $28 million in estimated DVD sales.[45]

Soundtrack
I Know Who Killed Me
Film score by
Joel McNeely
ReleasedJuly 31, 2007
Recorded2007
GenreFilm soundtrack
Length1:35:09
LabelVarèse Sarabande
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[46]

The score for I Know Who Killed Me, composed by Joel McNeely, was released on July 24, 2007.[46] It drew comparisons to the television mystery scores by Billy Goldenberg and received almost unanimously positive reviews from film music critics, with James Southall of Movie Wave saying the "unexpectedly classy score seems to go beyond the call of duty"[47] and Clark Douglas of Movie Music UK rating it 5 stars and calling it "one of the year's best scores, a must-have for those who are willing to take a trip into a deep, dark, and sometimes terrifying musical world."[48]

  1. "Prelude for a Madman"
  2. "Duality"
  3. "Fairytale Theme"
  4. "A Daughter Is Dead"
  5. "End of Innocence/Aubrey Is Gone"
  6. "A Mother's Grief"
  7. "Search for Aubrey"
  8. "The Bus Stop"
  9. "Spontaneous Bleed"
  10. "Going Home"
  11. "Jennifer's Room"
  12. "Some People Get Cut"
  13. "Investigating Stigmata"
  14. "The Mirror"
  15. "The Graveyard"
  16. "I Know Who Killed Me"
  17. "The House"
  18. "Dad Dies"
  19. "Death of Norquist"
  20. "Prelude/Reunited"
  21. "Valse Brillante, Op. 34, No. 2 in A Minor"

Awards and nominations

I Know Who Killed Me received nine nominations at the 28th Golden Raspberry Awards and won eight.[49] The film set a record for the most Razzie wins in a single year, beating the previous tie held by Battlefield Earth and Showgirls with seven wins each (though the former surpassed its overall wins due to two more awards in subsequent years). The record for most wins in a single year was broken in 2012 when Jack and Jill won ten awards.[50][51] Its musical score was nominated as Best Original Score for a Horror/Thriller Film by the International Film Music Critics Association.[52]

Award Ceremony date Category Subject Result
Golden Raspberry Awards February 23, 2008 Worst Picture Won
Worst Actress (as Aubrey Fleming) Lindsay Lohan
Worst Actress (as Dakota Moss)
Worst Screen Couple
Worst Remake or Rip-off (of Hostel, Saw and The Patty Duke Show)
Worst Director Chris Sivertson
Worst Screenplay Jeff Hammond
Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie
Worst Supporting Actress Julia Ormond Nominated
March 6, 2010 Worst Actress of the Decade (also for Herbie: Fully Loaded and Just My Luck) Lindsay Lohan
Worst Picture of the Decade
International Film Music Critics Association February 20, 2008 Best Original Score for a Horror/Thriller Film Joel McNeely

References
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