My friend won tickets to a pre release showing of this movie in Boston. I went into the theater with absolutely no idea what it would be about and with no preconceived notions. I left the theater feeling confused and thankful that I hadn't actually paid to see it.
This film takes every thriller movie cliché in the book and slathers it on ad nauseam. I'm not opposed to a good cliché thriller movie, but at some point it becomes comical. The plot was extremely contrived and had enough holes to fill the Royal Albert Hall. Perhaps the scenes explaining the plot ended up on the cutting room floor in favor of some of the more grotesque and gratuitous gore scenes (of which there were plenty). The film's twist, one so ludicrous even the most die-hard Lohan films will giggle, is pulled directly from left field after a seemingly magical epiphany by the film's main character. The filmmakers thrown in a plethora of minor characters with undeveloped and unresolved story lines in an attempt to "throw off" the audience. Nevertheless, not ten minutes into the film, I, along with the others I was with, had successfully predicted the antagonist.
The final thirty minutes of the film was a non-stop laugh riot. The packed theater of varying demographics was rolling in the aisles as cliché after hackneyed cliché flew off the screen in rapid succession to hilarious results. I joked to the person beside me that I hadn't laughed as hard since the first time I saw "Borat".
Stylistically, the movie is a film school student's wet dream rife of "artsy" shots and recurring motifs. Unfortunately, for the audience, this does little to redeem from the film's most blaring flaw: it's entire premise.
It's difficult to fairly critique the film's actors given what they had to work with. I can say that Lohan's performance seemed rather bland and stale throughout, as though in the back of her mind she knew the movie was trite and looked at it more as a paycheck than a serious mark on her resume.
Aside from the occasional, "I almost died laughing when....", I heard scarcely a good comment in the lobby after the film. As a horror-comedy this film might have actually been good, but as a thriller it missed the mark entirely.
