I Know Who Killed Me is obviously not a teen comedy but I was surprised when it began with a low-rent stripper, Dakota Moss (Lindsay Lohan), wriggling around on a tiny stage (though clothed) in front of old men.

Immediately we go to a perfectly normal upper-middle-class family where Aubrey Fleming (Lohan) is fending off the sexual advances of her football player boyfriend Jerrod (Brian Geraghty). She's going off to college and too sensible to have pre-marital sex. There's a serial killer in this picture-perfect town and one of Aubrey's classmates has been brutally mutilated and dumped.

Then Aubrey is kidnapped by the town's serial killer.

Back to tough Dakota. Strangely, her middle finger starts bleeding at the strip club and then is pulled off. Dakota doesn't go the emergency room but takes a bus back to her room. Meanwhile, Dakota's double Aubrey is horrifically mutilated while wide-awake.

The old couple next to me got up and left, and I hid my eyes. It was grotesque.

Weeks later, Aubrey is found alongside a road and when she wakes up in the hospital she denies being Aubrey. She insists her name is Dakota. She is also a feisty, capable young woman who accepts her mutilation with a degree of, "Well, shit happens." She's missing a leg and a hand. Dakota's attitude is refreshing.

After being fitted with a fake hand and leg, she's too lazy to bother plugging in the mechanical leg. Everyone thinks Aubrey has amnesia and when she is taken home by her parents, Daniel and Susan (Neal McDonough and Julia Ormond), she smokes and has hot sex with goofy Jerrod upon meeting him. Those lost limbs do not bother her one bit. I liked that about Dakota.

Dakota is a good role model. She readily admits being a stripper and that her dead mother was a crack whore. She further tells her faux-mother Susan that, why should she deny being Aubrey? Aubrey has everything, even stuffed animals!

So how are they going to solve this conundrum that has been contrived? Does it pay off? Well, it is based on some pretty well-established studies on twins. It was more satisfying than the "Ocean's Thirteen" plot wrap-up and if you forced me to choose, I'd see "I Know Who Killed Me" over "Blades of Glory." In fact, I passed up watching "Blades of Glory" for re-reading "Sky Mail" on a recent flight.

I know I'm supposed to hate I Know Who Killed Me, but if I judged it alongside other low-budget horror films in this vein, like When A Stranger Calls (or even cruel fluff like The Princess Diaries), I would say that Lohan does a very good job, especially when playing Dakota. And the film is rated "R."

Directed with a heavy hand by Chris Sivertson (too obvious, it could have been more psychologically subtle) and written by Jeff Hammond, while "I Know" is not Class A caliber material by any means, it is not terrible. In fact, I liked Lohan's work here better than in the all-star Bobby.