10 Best Films With Unreliable Narrators

Intriguingly, on second viewing, the title sequence of Identity gives away the twist in several ways. A child’s drawing is shown with a boy, his mother and several stick men, and the doctor is even recorded as asking serial killer Malcolm who he is speaking to. The ambiguous timeline doesn’t hide that Malcolm is the murderer, but the motel story is presented as a flashback, recounting murders that he committed in the past.

It is easy to assume John Cusack’s Ed is the narrator and is telling the tale of a simple murder mystery involving ten strangers trapped in a rainstorm. The story is so well crafted that even when the shocking identity of Malcolm is revealed, showing that all the characters are his multiple personalities, it is still a further surprise when young Timmy is exposed as the monstrous homicidal part of him that the doctors have been trying to destroy.

Malcolm has no idea that his other personalities existed, making him the ultimate unreliable narrator as he is not only the protagonist, but also unknowingly the antagonist. The doctors’ treatment to get him to ‘reduce’ the other personalities succeeds, but ultimately fails when the one remaining psychopathic personality takes over completely after terminating all the others, removing Malcolm’s last trace of morality.