I Know Who Killed Me is a 2007 American psychological horror film directed by Chris Sivertson, written by Jeff Hammond, and starring Lindsay Lohan.
Aubrey Fleming (Lohan) is your average Teen Genius. She plays piano. She gets good grades. She has a boyfriend. Things are going insanely well for her, until one day when she just...vanishes.
She's found a week or so later, missing a hand and a foot. However, the person who winds up in the hospital bed insists that she's not Aubrey Fleming, but rather is an identical stripper named Dakota Moss. Aubrey's family decides to take her in, even after an unexplained cut appears on her arm. However, Dakota's still not convinced that she's really Aubrey, and starts to figure that the unexplained cuts and amputations might have also happened to the real Aubrey Fleming...
I Know Who Troped Me:
- Actor Allusion: This isn't the first time Lindsay Lohan has played a pair of separated-at-birth twins.
- All There in the Manual: Deleted materials were to show that the entire plot was merely a fiction piece written by Aubrey as a project.
- Always Identical Twins: Aubrey and Dakota. This is the cause of their synchronization, according to the film.
- An Arm and a Leg: Aubrey/Dakota lose a hand and foot.
- Artificial Limbs: Dakota gets some of these after being brought to the hospital.
- Artificial Limbs Are Stronger: Played with. Dakota's artificial limb is supposed to be a lot stronger (and she uses it as a weapon at one point), providing she remembers to charge it.
- As Himself: Radio host Art Bell appears as himself in the film.
- Buried Alive: Aubrey is buried alive near the end of the film.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Taken to extremes. Aubrey is represented by the color blue, and almost every scene she's in focuses on all the things in the frame that are blue, just to make sure you get the point. Dakota is likewise represented by red.
- Color Wash: Practically every scene with Aubrey has some form of blue lighting, and a similar case occurs with Dakota and red lighting.
- Evidence Dungeon: The killer's dungeon is revealed as one once it's found. You practically couldn't keep more incriminating evidence in one place if you wanted to get caught. One egregious example is that the killer, who's focused on mutilating the limbs of their victims, keeps a multitude of mannequin limbs hanging from the ceiling.
- Family-Friendly Stripper: Dakota works as a stripper, but the most revealing outfit she appears in is lingerie, and not even skimpy lingerie, but rather well-covering. (Lindsay Lohan had a nudity clause in her contract.) One could probably invoke suspension of disbelief and let it pass, if not for the fact that other strippers are shown working in the same place and they are shown getting naked.
- Groin Attack: The villain gets very brutally, though totally deserved, hit in the groin with a broken bottle before he's killed.
- Homage: To the work of Brian De Palma. There are identical twin sisters (Sisters), a sex worker protagonist in danger of being killed by a serial killer (Dressed to Kill and Body Double), and a heavy giallo influence (all of his movies previously mentioned, plus Blow Out).
- Informed Ability: Aubrey is supposed to be a great writer and piano player. Supposed to be.
- It's All About Me: For most of the movie, Daniel is apparently willing to let Aubrey and Dakota die and allow a violent serial killer to escape justice if it means keeping his own crimes a secret. He abruptly changes his tune in time for the big climax.
- Lady in Red: Stripper Dakota is color-coded in red.
- Mind Screw: And not in a good way. At one point, Art Bell of all people actually shows up in the middle of the movie to essentially explain what is happening.
- Ms. Fanservice: Why else have Lindsay Lohan as a stripper?
- Nested Story Reveal: The original ending revealed that it was all Aubrey's story in English class.
- Police Are Useless: The police, who think that Aubrey has been deeply traumatized by being kidnapped and having her limbs sawn off by a maniac. They respond to this by victim shaming her, being extremely aggressive towards her, and treating her as if she is deliberately keeping information from them.
- Psycho Knife Nut: The killer uses knives as his preferred weapon, though oddly enough, he doesn't use actual knives, but rather blades crudely made out of shards of glass.
- Redemption Equals Death: The climax has Daniel—after spending most of the movie keeping his secret under wraps at the expense of Aubrey and Dakota—going with former to confront the killer and save Aubrey. He quickly pays for his sudden change of heart with his life.
- Rich Sibling, Poor Sibling: Audrey Fleming was raised by wealthy parents who bought her from her heroin-addicted mother, is a Teen Genius, and a prodigy piano player. Her sister Dakota was left alone after her mother's death and strips in a local club.
- Serious Work, Comedic Scene: This is a psychological horror film, but it has one scene that's Played for Laughs. When Dakota has sex with Audrey's boyfriend, her mother can been seen in the kitchen desperately trying to distract herself from the moaning.
- Separated at Birth: Audrey and Dakota, identical twins who got separated. Neither knew the other existed, while Dakota finds it out only after she starts experiencing what Aubrey does.
- Surreal Horror: The movie consists of such things as identical twins feeling each other's pain to the point where Dakota gets frostbite on her arm and leg just like Aubrey. Dakota even starts suffocating while Aubrey is being buried alive.
- Switched at Birth: Daniel bought Aubrey from her and Dakota's drug-addicted mother after his own daughter died at birth.
- Synchronization: Aubrey and Dakota share injuries, to the point where Dakota starts suffocating when Aubrey's face is covered.
- Title Drop: Like everything else in the movie, it makes no sense at all, given that only one person dies, and she does not narrate the story or anything.
- Tragic Stillbirth: It's revealed later in the film that Daniel actually bought Aubrey from her drug-addicted biological mother after his own daughter was stillborn.
- World of Jerkass: The police behave as though Dakota is deliberately keeping information from them, despite operating on the assumption that Aubrey is pretending to be Dakota Moss as a coping mechanism for the severe trauma she went through, and engage in some vicious victim-shaming during their subpar investigation. Daniel similarly mistreats Dakota and knows that he bought Aubrey as one of twins, but keeps quiet even though doing so puts both Dakota and Aubrey in danger. Aubrey's boyfriend either knows Dakota isn't Aubrey and has sex with her anyway, or believes his girlfriend is in the middle of a dissociative breakdown and has sex with her anyway. Dakota is a Deadpan Snarker who has sex with Aubrey's boyfriend in earshot of her mother. And there's a serial killer out there burying girls alive. Aubrey and her mother Susan are the only exceptions to this, and they're barely in the movie.
