The Ending Of Identity Explained

In almost every paranoia thriller, it scarcely matters if the puzzle "makes sense" or not, as long as it's emotionally effective. That's very much the case of "Identity," which explains why it's such a well-remembered example of the genre. If there is a problem with the ending, it has less to do with the orderliness of its inner world, and more with the relationship between that world and our own.

In our world, after all, movies are one of the first and most widespread ways through which people shape their understanding of mental disorders. And, though the metaphor of "Identity" works for the purposes of telling an affecting story, it also peddles an utterly ludicrous idea of how dissociative identity disorder (called "syndrome" in the movie) works. Per the informational website TraumaDissociation.com, "Any psychiatrist who ... states 'I knew there would be violence' as a result of 'treatment' or that identities should be 'killed off' is clearly unfit to practice." The website also posits that the movie's post-twist depiction of Malcolm "increasingly seemed to showed [sic] a psychotic disorder (breaks with reality) rather than Dissociative Identity Disorder."

Given that, per the same website, DID is not really associated with murderous delusions like Malcolm's, and that people with DID are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence, it's no wonder that a review of "Identity" on the website of mental health organization PermiaCare calls the movie "exploitative and unsatisfying," with "clichéd and derogatory images of the dangerous mentally ill." That the twist of "Identity" is still enjoyable after all these years speaks to James Mangold's craft as a storyteller, but be careful not to let it color your understanding of DID in the real world.