John Cusack focus concludes with Review of Identity

It can be a really effective premise to confine your characters to a single location fort eh duration of the drama. The ancient Greeks were certainly aware of this as a narrative device. It can work best in a thriller and there are many that throw a bunch of people together for a single night and then dispatch them one by one.

James Mangold’s Identity starts eerily and mysteriously with newspaper clippings of a motel murder and voiceover recordings of a psychiatrist (Alfred Molina) talking to the alleged perpetrator. Then suddenly we’re thrust into a motel office as a man bursts in holding his bleeding wife shouting at the clerk to call an ambulance. Then in overlapping flashbacks we see the sequence of events, involving a young call girl, a limousine driver and an aging movie star, and a young boy who never speaks, that led to the accident. Because of a terrible rain storm that has washed out the road in both directions, all these characters and more wind up at the motel together.

Movie Review: Peter Jackson's The Frighteners a Big Disappointment from a Big Director

*This 1996 film was released several years ago as a 4 disc DVD set in a shameless attempt to capitalize on Peter Jackson's success with The Lord of the Rings and King Kong. It is hardly deserving of a Director's Cut, Director's Commentary and the special features to fill so many bytes of digital space. If I have time this weekend, I will take a look at some of the special features and post a follow-up.

It’s a wonder that the same directing/writing husband/wife team of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh that gave us the incredible Heavenly Creatures next foisted The Frighteners upon us. One of the earliest films to heavily employ CGI for story-telling purposes (to decent effect for 1996, I must add), it rather unfortunately has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be. What could have been a compelling psychological thriller/mystery about a man who started seeing spirits after the tragic death of his wife turns into a bit of a farce employing gimmicks, schtick, caricature and really bad jokes in a very mildly scary ghost story.

Michael J. Fox plays Frank Bannister, a kind of sham ghostbuster who utilizes the help of two ghosts (a bookish white guy with glasses and an afro-adorned, bellbottoms wearing black guy who practically speaks jive like the two black passengers in Airplane) to haunt the homes of the recently bereaved in order to prey on their vulnerability, swoop in and clear the house of poltergeists, reaping a heavy cash reward in the process.