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| This is the weirdest idea for a Parent Trap reboot ever. |
Directed by: Chris Silvertson
Produced by: Frank Mancuso, Jr., David Grace
Written by: Jeff Hammond
Budget: $12,000,000
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty, Garcelle Beauvais
High school student and aspiring writer Aubrey Fleming (Lohan) lives in the little town of New Salem, which is currently being terrorized by a serial killer who abducts and murders young women. One night Aubrey vanishes as the killer's next victim but mysteriously reappears on the side of the road a few nights later before passing out. When she awakes from her coma, she claims her name is Dakota Moss, and that she's a stripper who has never heard of this Aubrey Fleming chick. As strange events start happening to Dakota, she must unravel what's going on before something bad happens to her.
Yeah, so it turns out Aubrey and Dakota are twins separated at birth who share a psychic connection that actually shares injuries between them. At one point Art Bell from Coast to Coast AM shows up to explain to the audience exactly what "stigmatic" twins are. Like...directly to the audience, while standing in front of a green screen.
This was one of the last movies Lohan starred in before her well publicized meltdown in the late 00's. It was also her first attempt at playing something that was more adult, and I don't know that I would say it was very successful. She wouldn't return to movies to act outside of a 2009 ABC Family original movie until Machete in late 2010.
The Good
The only good thing about this movie is that it could have been worse? There's certain shots and effects which work, including a pretty well-done mirror transition that I thought was pretty clever. Other than that I really had to work to find anything I would qualify as at-par for even a small film like this.
If you're a fan of watching really gruesome injury effects you might get something out of this every twenty minutes or so. I'm talking full-on close-ups of dry ice stripping the skin from a hand, fingers and other limbs getting amputated on screen, and numerous other gratuitous effects.
The Bad
Where to start...how about the fact that the movie feels like a really bad attempt at being like old-school David Lynch thrillers, with strange fades, transitions, cuts, and superimposed images and solid-color frames inserted at spots. The symbolism here is pretty obvious, with Aubrey's scenes overloaded with saturated blues and Dakota's with bright reds. Near the end there's a number of scenes with owls in them for no adequately explained reason. At one point all the colors fade from the scene except for the blues, but they're so poorly overlaid that it looks like someone painted them directly onto the negatives.
As a thriller this movie doesn't offer a whole lot, aside from the pure lie of a title. The "Me" obviously references Lohan's character, but she plays two characters and neither of them actually die. At one point she even drops the title as a line and it's supposed to be a big revelatory moment but...it's still a lie, and a pretty weak attempt at being a clever title. I know what it's supposed to mean, but there's never really any doubt that Aubrey wasn't murdered, so it never has much of a payoff.
The acting is hilarious across the board. Lohan doesn't put any effort into either of her roles beyond good and bad girl. For example, at one point Dakota's finger falls off (due to her sympathetic link with the tortured Aubrey) and her reaction is to grunt a lot and hold a towel to the stump. The rest of the cast invests just as little into their own roles; Ormond phones in her performance as a worried mother, and Geragthy seems to think that his character is actually the murderer, when he's just a school crush.
I remember hearing about this movie back when it was released and how there was a lot of attention called to the fact that Lohan was trying to be adult and sexy; most of them pointed out that Lohan played a pole dancer as if that was notable in any way. Well if you were planning on watching this for the pole dancing, don't bother. It tries to be sexy but comes across as Lohan trying way too hard.
The Rest
There's honestly not much here to talk about beyond the standard bad movie stuff. This movie was actually nominated for nine Golden Razzies and won eight of them, a record for single-year wins which beat the previous record holders Battlefield Earth and Showgirls. It held the record until 2012 until it was beaten by...Jack and Jill. Go figure.
Should You Watch It?
No.
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