NOW ON VOD! Director Alexandra Spieth delivers a splashy, gory meta-story mystery in her psychological thriller I Know Exactly How You Die. Rian (Rushabh Patel) is a writer going through a rough patch in his life, who travels to a remote hotel in Pennsylvania to clear his head. His girlfriend dumped him, while his agent, Ruthie (Lori Phillipe Barkin), is calling him frantically, demanding the draft of his latest horror novel. He seeks isolated solitude to finish the book.
As he begins to bang out the continuation of his violent serial killer novel, he realizes that what he writes is beginning to come true. His protagonist is named Katie, a woman running from a vicious serial killer (Bobby Liga), when an actual woman named Katie (Stephanie Hogan) comes to stay at the hotel. He learns that she, too, is evading a killer. He tries to power through his written narrative with more sensitivity to the experience of his protagonist.
Up to this point, it would be tempting to see Rian as the helpful hero responding to supernatural forces beyond his control. This is how he sees himself, and being the only male at the hotel, he feels a masculine responsibility to protect the women. But there’s a dark side to him as well, as evidenced by his stalker-calling his ex-girlfriend obsessively, despite her never returning the calls. He leaves her voice messages, alternating between vindictive, rage-filled rants and weepy apologies, in which he promises to do better and begs her to take him back.
In conversation with the hotel manager, Naja (Rawya El Chab), Rian learns that the hotel itself may be the source of his writing bleeding over into real life. She tells him she wrote a poem about her husband, which came true, and now he is missing. There are other secrets kept by the women at the hotel. All is not as it seems. He misses important clues about them, because he tends to think of women only in terms of what they can do for him. This narcissism leads him into trouble. One thing becomes crystal clear, and that is Katie is no damsel in distress and does not need him to save her.
“… what he writes is beginning to come true …”
The causes and effects in this film are not necessarily logical, depending more on creating an atmosphere of dread and confusion. Rian has disturbing dreams that also start to mingle with reality. Patel and Hogan deliver solid performances, as does Rawya El Chab. The cinematography is dark and adds to the feelings of displacement. The hotel has some hold over the people there, as no one chooses to leave.
The idea of a writer’s work manifesting in the real world is an old and well-used one. In The Dark Half, Timothy Hutton is a writer whose evil fictional version of himself appears and wreaks havoc. Arguably, the best example of fiction bleeding into the real world is John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, loosely based on ideas from H.P. Lovecraft, in which a horror writer’s books drive people mad and alter the real world. There are many other examples of this trope in film. Spieth finds a unique way to employ this device to make a point about the treatment of women in a patriarchal world where men seek to destroy women they can’t have.
As the film winds its meandering way toward the chaotic finale, it becomes harder to discern fact from fiction (or dreams). Ultimately, we are not sure now who is in control of the story. Spieth has crafted a tale about women claiming agency in a situation that traditionally would have them as victims. I Know Exactly How You Die is a clever upending of expected tropes that will keep you guessing until the credits roll… and after.
"…upending of expected tropes that will keep you guessing..."
