Recent thrillers have, on the whole, walked a consistent path. Although genres tend to cross pollinate, current thrillers have at least fundamentally stuck to their prime reasons for being whether that be supernatural thriller (The Ring, Signs, The Mothman Prophecies), sci-fi criminal investigate thriller (Minority Report, Dark City), feminist social conscience thriller (Enough), and thriller/horror (Final Destination). You expected a certain result and got it even if the film was mediocre.

When movies like Below (2002) and "Identity" confuse generic aspects and tease the audience, in both cases the supernatural with the Agathie Christie-style traditional thriller, it comes across as not knowing its own mind, maybe its identity.

"Identity" leaves information hidden from the audience for most of the film. It all makes sense after viewing, but by then it is an anti-climax, a non-experience.

When 10 strangers lodge together one rainy night at a hotel situated on an Indian burial site in the middle of nowhere they begin to quickly disappear as someone begins murdering them off. In hackneyed manner there is a connection between them all, but the film fails to tie up some of the situations it starts to unfold, and some moments defy logic.

"Identity" suffers its own crisis when the supernatural thriller is laced with straight murder-mystery; it’s a thriller to say the least but mixes it up with supernatural theatrics and anticipation, and Red Dragonesque psychoanalysis theory, the one which inserts a traumatic childhood incident for audiences to empathise with – which is becoming a tired but interesting formula. What’s new or enlightening about intolerable childhood moments? I suspect that it is important (more self-important) here although fails to be moving and remarkable: it can’t move the audience because the build-up to emotionally connect is missing.

An uncomfortable hybrid of speculation over supernatural causes to the incidents and straight forward murder-mystery structure doesn’t compliment one another, including the modern day thriller propensity to melodrama where characters cannot control their emotions and so actors over-act. The supernatural aspect seems out of place when the conclusion is revealed leaving you asking what was the point of entertaining the preternatural possibilities in the first place.

Cliché’s aside, "Identity" starts promisingly, enough to engage the viewer. It is more suspenseful in its quieter moments, but that is not saying much. Suffice to say that the sequence at the beginning where one unsuspecting victim is about to suffer her last breath is the most suspenseful throughout the entire film.

The violence in this film is more subtle and disturbing, shocking by what’s implied rather than what’s seen, although it includes several gut-wrenching shots. Some reviewers called this an ode to Psycho but to compare this to Hitchcock is too complimentary.

Peek-A-Boo!