Jim Ridley on I Know Who Killed Me (Commonplace Book)

Jim Ridley, a few weeks ago, wrote an article called Ten Movies in 2007 That Deserved More Attention. HIs brief comment on Lindsay Lohan's flop I Know Who Killed Me encapsulates the kind of criticism I like best -- criticism that makes genuinely surprising observations about trash and gets me to re-think something. There are quite a few folks around here in the "I don't care what kind of smart thing you can say, that still sucked" camp, often followed by a compliment along the lines of "the criticism is more interesting that the film." I have taken this position myself, at times. Nevertheless I still think it is a substantial accomplishment to make me go back and at least question my initial judgement, as this comment did. Here is what he said.

I Know Who Killed Me. Not even Lindsay Lohan's sojourn in the tabloids stirred up much interest in this marvel of trashy delirium. A pity, too: Chris Sivertson's mystifying mood piece about a demure honor student who morphs into a mutilated stripper was sold as torture porn, but it's closer in spirit to a glue-huffing remake of Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique. As psychodrama, it was even more potent. Try finding a more eerie metaphor for a child star's uneasy transition to adulthood than pole-dancer Lohan facing her Disney-princess self packed away in a casket.