Anyone not living in a cave might have caught on that actress Lindsay Lohan is a young woman struggling with a self-destructive streak. Her escapades in driving while under the influence of half the gross national product of Columbia, however tragic for herself, is arguably quite entertaining for the rest of us. Sadly, the same can not be said about her latest film, other than those recorded by the Los Angeles Police Department, the mystery thriller "I know Who Killed Me". It's a real bummer all round.

Screenwriter Jeffrey Hammond and director Chris Sivertson, for lack of any coherent plot, seems to have tried for a sort of poor man's David Lynch thing, what with dream logic, owls, and symbolic colour schemes - red, and oh so much blue! I halfway expected a dancing midget talking backwards to make an appearance from behind some red velvet drapes.

The story, such as it is, is as follows: Young Laura Palmer like goody two shoes Aubrey Fleming is a virtuous high schooler who likes to play the piano, writes stories about identity issues, and is doted on by her family and surroundings. But there's danger lurking in this small town idyll, in the form of a serial killer who has abducted and dismembered another young girl.

Aubrey is snatched and brought to the killer's picturesque lair, and turns up some time later in a ditch, minus an arm and a leg. Her parents' joy at finding her alive however is marred by the fact that when she wakes up in the hospital, she claims she's not Aubrey at all, but Dakota Moss, a stripper and daughter of a dead crack whore, and remembers nothing of the attack. And she's indeed not the well behaved daughter they lost, but a foul mouthed, chain smoking, sex pot. Is she crazy, traumatised into another personality she's made up? Or is she the long lost twin sister? And is the real Aubrey still out there, in the clutches of the killer? She sets out to find out. And well she might, as the police investigators must be among the most incompetent this side of the cartoons.

This amputation fetish flick inevitably brought to mind another film, "Boxing Helena" from 1993, which also functioned as an effective career suicide for just about everyone involved. In this Jennifer Lynch (daughter of the Sultan of Surrealism, director David Lynch) opus, the lovely Sherilyn Fenn is abducted by the infatuated surgeon played by Julian Sands, who turns her into a human classical torso, by severing all of her limbs.

It should say something that I'd rather watch "Boxing Helena" again, any number of times, than be forced to endure another showing of "I Know Who Killed Me". At least in the former you had the feeling that however misguided, disturbing, and ill executed, there actually was some thought put into the work, some artistic ambition besides milking young people's wallets. In the latter there are no redeeming qualities whatsoever, not even the over the top camp that might inspire laughter, snarky comments, and the ritual throwing of popcorn at the screen. None.

We are treated to repeated flashbacks to scenes of her pole dancing. Only, the patrons in this "Gentlemen's Club" seem more than happy with a stripper that never... well strips. So even that prurient selling point is denied to us. Honestly, if you're going the exploitation route to torture porn town anyway, why not go all the way and throw in some gratuitous skin a la "Showgirls"?

In the end, the ending actually comes as something of a surprise, for all the wrong reasons. Anyone who managed to stay awake 20 minutes into the film would have long since figured the whole cliché ridden thing out, but would likely go, "Nah... It can't be that obvious. It has to be a red herring!" Nope. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably just a really bad movie.

There is no mystery here. Neither is it a mystery who killed Lohan's career. She's accomplishing that task fine on her own. This film is the equivalent of artistically opening your veins. Her antics off the screen, that must surely have made her uninsurable by any studio barkers enough to risk hiring her by now, is simply the final attempt at Harakiri.