A film that becomes too enamored with its own genre awareness. Absolutely a post-Scream thriller in many of the worst ways possible. Unfortunate, as it wastes perhaps the only good performance of Milla Jovovich's career. Maybe it's just her own bad luck that the majority of her work has been with Paul W.S. Anderson and Luc Besson, two directors that, despite their many positive attributes, are more interested in archetypes and kineticism than realistic human emotion.
Twohy, taking a few notes from Hitchcock, uses the personas of his actors against the audience. Specifically Jovovich's naive, innocent work with Besson, as well as transforming Steve Zahn's perpetually flustered stoner act into a perpetually flustered uptight dude act. Then he sprinkles in Timothy Olyphant's penchant for charming sleaze to make a concoction that spends half the movie working pretty darn well, actually.
Unfortunately, the conclusion seems foregone as soon as it's suggested. In making us aware of its awareness about red herrings and the twists and turns of cinema thrillers, as well as a general condensing of suspects to an extremely limited number, it should surprise almost no one who has spent any amount of time watching movies just "whodunit." There's still an element of tension leading up to this unsurprising twist that keeps the movie watchable, but once the reveal is opened up for us the rest of the running time is spent spinning wheels. There's a lot of gruesome stabbing and shooting and maiming, but there's very little formal or psychological reason to care at that point. It's the equivalent of shouting "ta-da," striking a pose and then holding it long after the audience understands the trick and has started to become uncomfortable and unsure whether they should have gotten up and left already.
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