Identity

Character mistake: There's no way that using a regular needle and thread to sew up that wound would work the way it's shown. Anybody who knew what they were doing - which John Cusack is portrayed as knowing - would also know that using unsterilized materials and instruments without a sterile field from an uncleaned massive open wound is a great way to kill your patient.

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Suggested correction: The main plot of this film takes place inside the head of a murderer with dissociative identity disorder. The fact that stitching up a wound in that matter wouldn't work is irrelevant to the fact that it is how Malcolm is playing out the scenario in his head.

Phaneron ★

You're making a good point to invalidate a "character mistake", but couldn't the entry be reclassified as a "factual mistake" and stand as written?

KeyZOid

I would say no, as it is still assigning a mistake to something that is happening in someone's imagination. Unless Jon disagrees, I don't think those types of factual errors in this instance count as movie mistakes.

Phaneron ★

If it was all being imagined, I'd have to agree.

KeyZOid

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Mistakes

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Quotes

Ed: Listen to me, dude, I'm having a really fucked-up, really wet, very bad fucking day.

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Trivia

Trivia: The scene directly before the first victim, "the movie star", is killed she is talking to herself in the mirror. You can see her reflection and the reflection of the window behind her. If you pay close attention you can see that there is a silhouette in the curtains. Eventually the lightning flashes and you can see the face of the little boy in the silhouette looking into the window at her.

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Questions

Question: Could someone please tell me who was actually murdered? I understand that all the characters at the motel were personalities in the mind of Malcolm Rivers, and that the killer was Timmy, who was also one of Rivers' personalities. So if all the people at the motel were not real, why is Rivers about to be executed for murder, and how did the authorities have photos of the murdered people if there were no actual people murdered?

Answer: The actual, "real-life" killings happened before the events shown in the movie and are shown briefly in a flashback. The authorities knew that Malcolm had done it while believing to be one of his alternate personalities, but did not know which one, and had to be convinced that the killer personality was dead before changing his sentence to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, the killings we see in the motel during the movie, are Malcolm killing off his other personas, leaving in fact only - the killer.

Twotall

Answer: Since Timmy is the killer here, it would be correct to assume that he blew up the car and took Ginny away during the commotion and killed her in some way that isn't shown in film. Or else blowing up of the car becomes completely pointless and a classic like this won't show a scene that doesn't have a significance. So blowing up the car was actually a part of the plot to kill Ginny.

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