Somehow, I got the idea from the trailer (all action) that this film was something psychological, and so I started calling it “Id entity” before I saw it. Well, I was right in general, though wrong in detail.

Out in the middle of the Nevada desert, somewhere on the road from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, Carson City and Florida (!), we have the Bates Motel — well, that isn’t its name, but the atmosphere is at least reminiscent of that older movie motel. One terribly rainy night, when that single road past the motel is washed out a few miles away in either direction, a number of cars show up, to the consternation of motel owner Norman … I mean, Larry. One carries a husband, his badly-injured wife and her rather quiet son — these are the York family — as well as an ex-cop chauffeur Ed (John Cusack) and his superannuated movie-actress passenger (Rebecca de Mornay). Others who soon arrive are a couple of mismatched newlyweds, a hooker named Paris, and a cop (Ray Liotta) transporting a really nasty-looking con (Jake Busey); this fits in with an otherwise not-too-related introduction which shows a defense team attempting to save their convicted mass-murderer client from execution 24 hours off by having him brought to Carson City to prove to a judge that he’s mad as the proverbial hatter, suffering from multiple-personality syndrome, and so more properly fodder for a state hospital than for a trip riding the lightning (or whatever they use in death chambers in Nevada these days).

In a little while, of course, people in the motel start to die … well, to be murdered. And, about halfway through the movie, the convicted mass-murdered — who looks nothing at all like Jake Busey — arrives in Carson City. So, who is doing what to whom? And how do these two stories relate to each other?

Those who’ve watched the proper trailer (in which it is revealed that all the characters in the motel have the same birthday, a very unlikely coincidence) may start to figure it out early on. But I won’t give any more away here.

A rather interesting little movie, despite occasional overdependency on startlement (and don’t fall for the “Indian Burial Ground” red herring), and not overlong, as some are. I enjoyed it, especially the twist at the end, which I, for one, did not see coming.