Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jun 5, 2016 14:28:11 GMT -5
I Know Who Killed Me
Dir. Chris Siverston
Premiered July 27, 2007
In 2007, I Know Who Killed Me was widely mocked as the worst film of the year. Richard Roeper went even further, declaring it the worst film of the 2000s. It won eight Razzies, the most ever at the time. It was an easy target, too; it starred Lindsay Lohan just past the end of her career as a viable leading lady, coinciding with a DUI conviction and subsequent rehab stint (she was hospitalized for most of the movie's production). It was directed by a man who would later remake his own, earlier film. Ugly and awkward in every way, it’s exactly the kind of faux-cryptic, overedited garbage they used to make in my high school's film club.
But those final days of December, I was confounded. I had never heard of I Know Who Killed Me. It had never played in theaters in Pasadena, nor had it ever been advertised on local television or even billboards or bus benches. Trust me, I was paying attention. It’s as if the movie was somehow created by critics months after the fact with the sole purpose of being the worst movie of the year.
Which it isn’t.
Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, a normal girl in the town of New Salem who disappears one Friday night, possibly the next victim of a burgeoning serial killer. Eighteen days later, a young woman is found, missing a hand and a leg, but otherwise matching Aubrey’s description. However, she claims instead to be Dakota Moss, the stripper (who doesn’t strip) daughter of a dead crack addict who merely experienced spontaneous amputation. The FBI discovers that Dakota is a literary creation of Aubrey’s, and that Aubrey is simply delusional. However, after researching “non-religious stigmata” (really), Dakota comes to the conclusion that she is in fact Aubrey’s long-lost twin.
Also, Darnell from My Name is Earl gives her a robot hand.
The plot, while ludicrous, isn’t even the worst part of the movie. Watching this, I was reminded of Smokin’ Aces: trying to be a type of movie rather than an actual movie. Most things in the film happen because that’s what happens in movies like these. When the killer is revealed, it’s on the most tangential and meaningless of evidence. Said killer affects the creepy mannerisms and aesthetic of a typical movie serial killer, collecting mannequin legs for no reason. Seemingly important characters in the first act are never seen again. The FBI stuff never pays off. Most of the dialogue in sounds improvised. There’s a furious, multiple-minute sex scene set to a funky ‘80s porno soundtrack. Some scenes exist just to fill time, while other, more crucial moments seem to have been cut out altogether. Some have been cut down to as little as ten seconds and make no sense in any context, abutted at all times with random, rhythmless cuts and transitions. Lohan, despite making this immediately after Georgia Rule, looks years older and is visibly ill. And as Dakota, she is distressingly nonchalant about body parts spontaneously falling off.
But more than anything, this movie’s downfall, the one that makes it a special kind of terrible, is its faux-profound obsession with the color blue. Aside from Dakota, whose flashbacks and clothes are red, any object that is not monochrome or brown is blue. Aubrey’s bedroom walls are blue. Every book on her bookshelf is blue. The lights illuminating her bed are blue. Dakota is found by a woman dressed in blue and taken to a hospital where all the equipment is blue. Aubrey’s motif is a blue rose of a sort that does not actually exist in nature (in the film, they’re obvious props, much like the literal “Tudor rose” in Roland Emmerich’s abominable Anonymous). This movie has more blue than Derek Jarman’s Blue. It might even have more blue than Star Trek: the Motion Picture. Even the killer’s weapons are made of cheap, transparent blue plastic. In order to show off the blue, the film’s color scheme has been edited in post in such a way that blood no longer stands out. In an ostensible horror film.
I Know Who Killed Me can’t even be the same kind of enjoyable blunder that The Number 23 was, as its dialogue is as bland and forgettable as anything I’ve seen on film. When I finish this project, I Know Who Killed Me will certainly be in the bottom ten, maybe even the bottom five.
But it’s not the worst movie of 2007.
The worst movie of 2007 came out the following week.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
Exposed bra straps are cool. At one point, a naked teenager’s corpse is depicted, and has no pubic hair, the presence of which was considered unfathomably disgusting at the time.
Additional Notes
Dir. Chris Siverston
Premiered July 27, 2007
In 2007, I Know Who Killed Me was widely mocked as the worst film of the year. Richard Roeper went even further, declaring it the worst film of the 2000s. It won eight Razzies, the most ever at the time. It was an easy target, too; it starred Lindsay Lohan just past the end of her career as a viable leading lady, coinciding with a DUI conviction and subsequent rehab stint (she was hospitalized for most of the movie's production). It was directed by a man who would later remake his own, earlier film. Ugly and awkward in every way, it’s exactly the kind of faux-cryptic, overedited garbage they used to make in my high school's film club.
But those final days of December, I was confounded. I had never heard of I Know Who Killed Me. It had never played in theaters in Pasadena, nor had it ever been advertised on local television or even billboards or bus benches. Trust me, I was paying attention. It’s as if the movie was somehow created by critics months after the fact with the sole purpose of being the worst movie of the year.
Which it isn’t.
Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, a normal girl in the town of New Salem who disappears one Friday night, possibly the next victim of a burgeoning serial killer. Eighteen days later, a young woman is found, missing a hand and a leg, but otherwise matching Aubrey’s description. However, she claims instead to be Dakota Moss, the stripper (who doesn’t strip) daughter of a dead crack addict who merely experienced spontaneous amputation. The FBI discovers that Dakota is a literary creation of Aubrey’s, and that Aubrey is simply delusional. However, after researching “non-religious stigmata” (really), Dakota comes to the conclusion that she is in fact Aubrey’s long-lost twin.
Also, Darnell from My Name is Earl gives her a robot hand.
The plot, while ludicrous, isn’t even the worst part of the movie. Watching this, I was reminded of Smokin’ Aces: trying to be a type of movie rather than an actual movie. Most things in the film happen because that’s what happens in movies like these. When the killer is revealed, it’s on the most tangential and meaningless of evidence. Said killer affects the creepy mannerisms and aesthetic of a typical movie serial killer, collecting mannequin legs for no reason. Seemingly important characters in the first act are never seen again. The FBI stuff never pays off. Most of the dialogue in sounds improvised. There’s a furious, multiple-minute sex scene set to a funky ‘80s porno soundtrack. Some scenes exist just to fill time, while other, more crucial moments seem to have been cut out altogether. Some have been cut down to as little as ten seconds and make no sense in any context, abutted at all times with random, rhythmless cuts and transitions. Lohan, despite making this immediately after Georgia Rule, looks years older and is visibly ill. And as Dakota, she is distressingly nonchalant about body parts spontaneously falling off.
But more than anything, this movie’s downfall, the one that makes it a special kind of terrible, is its faux-profound obsession with the color blue. Aside from Dakota, whose flashbacks and clothes are red, any object that is not monochrome or brown is blue. Aubrey’s bedroom walls are blue. Every book on her bookshelf is blue. The lights illuminating her bed are blue. Dakota is found by a woman dressed in blue and taken to a hospital where all the equipment is blue. Aubrey’s motif is a blue rose of a sort that does not actually exist in nature (in the film, they’re obvious props, much like the literal “Tudor rose” in Roland Emmerich’s abominable Anonymous). This movie has more blue than Derek Jarman’s Blue. It might even have more blue than Star Trek: the Motion Picture. Even the killer’s weapons are made of cheap, transparent blue plastic. In order to show off the blue, the film’s color scheme has been edited in post in such a way that blood no longer stands out. In an ostensible horror film.
I Know Who Killed Me can’t even be the same kind of enjoyable blunder that The Number 23 was, as its dialogue is as bland and forgettable as anything I’ve seen on film. When I finish this project, I Know Who Killed Me will certainly be in the bottom ten, maybe even the bottom five.
But it’s not the worst movie of 2007.
The worst movie of 2007 came out the following week.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
Exposed bra straps are cool. At one point, a naked teenager’s corpse is depicted, and has no pubic hair, the presence of which was considered unfathomably disgusting at the time.
Additional Notes
- When Aubrey goes missing, a posse fans out through the fields to call her name, as if she’s a lost child in the woods.
- Just to recap, this movie is predicated on the assumption– not the premise, the assumption– that twins experience each other’s injuries and are consciously aware of each other’s existence, even if they don’t know about it.
- Julia Ormond plays Aubrey’s mother, who tells her ostensible daughter “you’re a fighter, keep kicking” after she’s had her leg amputated.
- Ormond also shows Lohan video of her sonogram. Video. Of a Sonogram. From 1988.
- The crew at How Did This Get Made? enjoyed this way more than I did. Check out their review. And if you’re further interested, check out June Diane Raphael’s reading of an extra’s account of the horribly unprofessional production (about halfway through the minisode).
Also in Theaters
In addition to The Simpsons Movie and I Know Who Killed Me, July 27 also saw the release of No Reservations, a romantic comedy set in a restaurant and having nothing to do with Anthony Bourdain’s contemporary hit TV program; as well as Who’s Your Caddy?, which has been called a black remake of Caddyshack, though I cannot confirm this.
Next Time: Bratz
In addition to The Simpsons Movie and I Know Who Killed Me, July 27 also saw the release of No Reservations, a romantic comedy set in a restaurant and having nothing to do with Anthony Bourdain’s contemporary hit TV program; as well as Who’s Your Caddy?, which has been called a black remake of Caddyshack, though I cannot confirm this.
Next Time: Bratz