Writing is difficult, especially if you are writing a self-aware genre fare that is as much about the love and hate relationship artists have with their art form, as it is about a story that seems to be losing itself to the idea of being written in real-time. The aforementioned analogy applies to both Mike Corey, the writer of “I Know Exactly How You Die,” and the protagonist of his tale, Rian Burman (Rushabh Patel), as both are clearly interested in weaving a web of mystery around their characters. However, none of them know exactly how to bring them to a thrilling end.
Which is to say that “I Know Exactly How You Die” is an intriguing meta-horror that literally loses the plot. Intriguing because despite its low budget, there’s no scarcity of genre thrills in the first two acts. Firstly, the setup is intentionally over-the-top. We follow Rian, a vaping, constantly anxious writer who has recently gone through a breakup and is struggling to write his latest novel. On paper, it feels like a poor B-movie plot about a mailman-turned-serial-killer who is stalking Rian’s protagonist Katie (Stephanie Hogan). She is a nurse who helps people struggling with addiction, but her stalker has forced her to isolate herself as her trauma grows exponentially.
Katie checks into a remote motel run by Naja (Rawya El Chab) – a surprisingly well-rounded character that just happens to give depth to both the film and Rian’s story – despite the threat of the killer being somewhere around her. Now this is where things get a little interesting and slightly messy. The narrative’s other end is about a heartbroken Rian latching onto her ex by constantly ringing her up and filling her mailbox with juvenile messages. His agent is on his ass to submit his first draft, and he, too, checks into the same motel as Katie. Predictably, the story that he is writing is not just happening in his head or on his empty doc file, but right next door.
However, when the two of them clash, “I Know Exactly How You Die” loses the narrative it builds. The focused screenplay ditches the intrigue and opts for absurdity. On paper, the said absurdity is actually the right choice. After setting up some preidtable beats, the third act should go bonkers. Filmmaker Alexandra Spieth’s assured direction up until this point also takes a beat as the mash between over-the-top genre thrills and meta-fiction does not sit right with the involuntary, convoluted turn that opts for hazy, nightmarish imagery that could only make sense if the half-baked addiction metaphor were well-realized.
In its present state, the film feels like it is two rewrites away from a sharp, snearing horror-thriller that is also able to build a couple of complex, fully-developed characters whose random actions make sense once the pages are let loose. I feel the third-act pivot would have worked if Naja’s (Rawya El Chab) character arc had been better fleshed out. The entire world-building around the motel and the mystery around it would have made the way the film ends feel more palpable. The convolution in the arcs also extends to that of the film’s antagonist, who would have felt much more intimidating had the film laid down some clear ground-rules for the way things pan out.
Flaws aside, “I Know Exactly How You Die” works because of the three performances at its centre. Despite the uneven nature that the writing lends them, Rushabh Patel, Stephanie Hogan, and Rawta El Chab hold the film together well. Patel is extremely fun to watch as he gives his rather unlikable character and his constant paranoia a gleefully entertaining edge. Hogan’s character commands the screen almost entirely when alone, although the third act doesn’t allow the complexity of her character to come through, as her back-and-forth with Patel feels rushed and underwritten. Rawta El Chab is able to make an impression even though she is rarely on screen. Shoutout to her scene with Hogan’s character, where she lends an honest ear to how women are often treated in the real world and to an extent in the fiction world – although, like the addiction metaphor, this one is also not explored well.
Overall, “I Know Exactly How You Die” is an effort to dive into the self-indulgence that comes with putting yourself into your art, but it swings so far away from its lofty ambitions that it’s hard for it to make its way back.
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