The grift that keeps on giving
Here are two things you’ll need to know about me if you’re ever forced to explain me to aliens from outer space:
One, I’d take on all my cat’s ailments and her poor life expectancy right now if I could–she means that much to me. Two, I frittered away one whole summer a few years back getting drunk and watching I Know Who Killed Me every chance I got.
It’s true.
I watched that bullcorn two or three times a week, for ages, which only seems like a lot if you forget about the booze; I was always so unfocused when I saw it that each viewing offered me something new.
If you’ve followed entertainment blogs, you know that mostly whenever anybody talks about this movie, they talk about Lindsay Lohan’s haggard appearance, or IKWKM’s crazy sweep at the Razzies that year, or how Lohan was so desperate to exorcise her wholesome Disney demon that she attached herself to a project which was both aggressively terrible and the sleazy flipside of The Parent Trap.
But today, I made an amazing discovery: a long, passionate, articulate comment on the IMDb about I Know Who Killed Me that seemed to contradict everything we know about the movie, about its conception… ABOUT LIFE ITSELF.
This guy has a completely different take on it–and a much more admiring one–than most people do. Most of the replies he’s received are from people who think he’s a crackpot, of course, but the curious thing about that is, nobody seems to agree about why he’s wrong.
It’s that pesky alternate ending, you know?
Once seen, it can’t be unseen, and it clouds any discussion of the story regardless of whether or not you accept it as canon. Its unspoken message is unmistakable: Even the filmmakers don’t understand the story. It’s cobbled together from found papers and expired toothpaste.
Here’s the deal: LiLo is a high school senior who’s amazingly gifted both as a writer and as a pianist. Alas, there ain’t no way she can keep dividing her energy between the two once she goes to college–Jägerbombs to slam, married professors to bang–so she’s decided to focus all her energy on one of the two disciplines and abandon the other.
Sadly, before she gets a chance to redirect her focus, she’s abducted by a psycho killer who keeps her for yonks, injecting her with wonder drugs to keep her conscious and alert while he slices off her extremities with the kind of beautiful, stylized glass murder tools you might find on Etsy if it still covered anything handmade.
Somehow she makes her escape, but when she’s found, she knows nothing of the virginal, moneyed honour student everyone says she is. That prissy little dillweed’s still all kidnapped up, and this girl here is KITTY, THE WORLD-WEARY WHORE!
(Yes, all right, fine. She’s Dakota, the jailbait stripper/hooker daughter of a dead crackhead.)
Everyone assumes she’s experiencing some kind of dissociative event, but they don’t get angry about it till the good girl’s laptop reveals that her pet project was an offensively stupid “separated at birth” story about a virginal, moneyed honour student and her bitter, skanky, long-lost twin… named Dakota.
Layer upon layer upon layer of horse-hockey, seriously. This movie is a cinematic Cake Wreck. I mean, jeepers:
Fair dues, though: Dakota’s version of events is even dumber than the story the good girl’s writing about her.
She doesn’t know how she turned up in the ditch where she was found, and as for her missing body parts–a condition consistent with that of an earlier, less fortunate victim of the mysterious killer–nobody cut them off, dude. They just kind of turned black and fell off, spontaneously and with no obvious cause.
(Seriously, this movie is stacked with high points, but the highest is when her finger rots and falls off while she’s taking a shower, time-lapsing like a mofo, and she just looks kind of disappointed, and sews it back on so she can keep cramming ciggies up her vadge at work.)
Anyway.
Despite considerable (and inexplicable) opposition, Dakota vows to figure out who’s taken the good girl and bring her abductor to justice.
No matter what you’re thinking happens next, no matter how much PCP you did before you came up with that, you still look like Mr. Rogers in the Land of Make-Believe compared to what actually happens.
The only rule is, There are no rules.
If you can stomach a certain measure of torture porn, I can’t recommend this movie highly enough. It’s got everything: pointless, confusing colour symbolism, product placement for ask.com, a cameo by Art Bell and a cameo by The Crab Man from My Name is Earl, a decent soundtrack, and best of all, best of all…
Best of all, it’s got a story so preposterous, convoluted and senseless that setting aside the whole grungy B movie exploitation thing, it’s a brilliantly amazing work of cruddy art that means whatever the heck you want it to, because neither the smartest nor the dumbest person in the world could ever give it a concrete and reasonable interpretation.
The heads-up is right there in the title. I Know Who Killed Me, Even Though I Am Demonstrably Alive, and So is My Doppelganger, as Believed by Me and Explicitly Stated by the Narrative.
But that’s not so punchy, I guess.
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I don’t know how you do it, Melodie. This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen and you have made me want to watch it again. You’re an evil genius.
Dooooooooo iiiiiiiiiiiit.
I watched it sober one time while I was noodling around online, and every time I looked up, I saw something that was a) unfamiliar to me and b) totally mental.
What’s with the owl, Lindsay Lohan? WHAT’S WITH THE OWL!
I think. I think almost deadly amounts of boozeahol would be needed for me to get through this movie.
And still, I am intriged. (g)
It’s not for everyone, I admit. I don’t know that you could make it through the torture porn scenes, for example.
I wish you could see the alternate ending, though. It has to be seen, to be believed.