all characters were split personalities of the killer and that the little boy was killing everyone off?

I remember watching Final Destination, when that girl gets hit by the bus and my mouth just dropped open. I hadn't been that surprised by a movie in years. It was such an unexpected event. If another film had used that shock technique before, I hadn't seen it, at least not that effectively. Now it's being done alot and Identity actually does it a few times.

the way the ending montage
showed how the "bad guy" pulled off the killings, and IMO some
of them left me with questions. I mean how did he get the bat
down the guys throat? Not believable. And I think the premise
hinged on the unreal being real if you know what I mean. (sorry,
I don't want to give to much away for those that haven't seen it)

baseball bat rammed down the throat kind of funny in an Evil Dead sort of way.

the mother at the beginning gets nailed by the car, I kind of knew it was going to happen, but the way they filmed it just unnerved the hell out of me....and towards the end when the dad gets smashed by the truck, I whinced in pain and I know I had a grimace on my face for at least a minute. It was so harsh and because of who his character was and what had happened to the kid, I felt so badly.

I think you misunderstood what was going on, IMO (unless I did heh). These things didn't actually happen, and were in his imagination, therefore, not all the murders had to have been realistic

All hell really seemed to break loose when the parents told the boy to be quiet... he shot them a nasty look then. I'd like to see if there was any other foreshadowing.

So what DID happen to Clea Duvall's (the newlywed) body? Did I miss something in the flashback scene?

I think it just disappeared like the rest of them

since none of them actually existed, their bodies just disapeared. Once that identity had been killed, it no longer was around , not even the body.

the diary with all the different personalities writings was shown to the hearing panel.

all the characters were already dead & in Hell. The shot of Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" in the limo put me in mind of his play "No Exit", which uses that device. Also, the scene where Busey tries to run away from the motel and ends up back at it showed that we weren't in the "real" world.

the identity of the killer personality, though. I thought, when it happened, that he might've killed his mother, but then I assumed that he died in the car explosion.

What was with the body in the freezer? Do you think that it represented the real world killer's original personality -- the one which would've existed had the others not come into being?

I recall Rebecca DeMornay got new boobies back when she was a guest star on ER a few years ago (when she was sort of dating Carter). I had a harder time just recognizing her now that she's a bit heavier (like a heavier Traci Lords).

I still think it's highly improbable that a judge would commute a death sentence execution based on a performance with the shrink, but I guess we had to have the guy be labelled "insane" even though the authorities truly have no idea which of the multiple personalities is in charge, and released to a mental hospital, else we don't get the truth of Malcolm's MPD.

I was pretty sure the kid held the key to it all, there were lots of clues. Even the inmate tells the rest of the personalities he's got a secret. Malcolm was pretty aware of what was going on. To have the inmate escape, only to have him find the motel again was the big clue that something was seriously not right with the reality of the situation. The blood on the back of Rhoades shirt was another clue. The kid was the last to be in his mom's room before they find her dead.

I could have done without the hysterical historionics of the blonde girl in the bathroom. That scene got on my nerves. I wasn't feeling no sympathy when she got carbombed.

When Ginny's head is found in the dryer, a women in the row in front me was so scared that she yelped and jumped out of her seat. Scenes like that are almost worth the price of admission.

...The fact that the first act and a half were pretty realistic in
terms of the filmakers leading you to believe that Ray Liotta's
character was the killer, and the way the people were killed
weren't too far fetched until the bat thing. And I guess once
they got to the fact that it was a ?10? year old kid doing the
murders and they way they were done went to show that the
kid must have had the strength of an adult. It would be hard
enough for Liotta's character to get a bat past Busey's teeth
let alone a kid. I realized that the murders weren't occuring
in a real world, but the part that made the film more interesting,
for me at least, was the fact that what was happening seemed
as though it COULD happen in the real world.

We hear tapes of the different personalities, and see pictures and stuff from the diary, so we know that there's this killer who has multiple personalities.

So as things started to not make sense (Busey running away from the motel and ending up at the motel, the keys turning up, the odd coincidences) I assumed that the characters were all different personalities of the killer.

I admit I didn't know about the *final* twist, and that one is cheating a little but not really - looking back, the kid really did look like the killer a bit (only insomuch as they were both pudgy).

Since everything in the motel takes place in the killer's head, the reality of the faux-murders isn't really an issue, is it?

after seeing the trailer months ago, I pretty much had the "twist in the middle" figured out. I do think that it was a good twist, and didn't cheat the audience. Unlike some recent movies, it can be traced back throughout the previous events.

the fact that everyone had the same birthday - but that was just another clue that they were all the same person, or at least in the same body - of COURSE they'd have the same birthday!

Did anyone else think that this movie was very similar to Donald's script "The Thr3e"? Think about it - the killer and victims are all the same person... multiple personalities... maybe the screenwriter went to the same script workshop as Donald. After all, McKee is a real person.

The title kind of ruined it for me together with the beginning. I also wished for a twisted plot a la Agatha Christie instead of the pschological twist of multiple personalities.

Sidenote: if they would have found evidence that was lost they would have postponed the death sentence. And to do aggressive psycholanalysis of the multiple personalities with several indivduals present in the same room is not "how they do it". Besides these small misses, I found it to be a pretty good film.