Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 21, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
B = 2 +
L = 12 +
A = 1 +
H = 8
= The Number 23.
That’s a rather paradoxical response to have to this Jim Carrey-starring psychothriller, given all the visual whammies director Joel Schumacher throws at the audience over the course of its running time. And it’s a disappointing one, too; in a genre landscape full of remakes, sequels and knockoffs, here’s a film that seems to offer an original storyline and vision, developed from an intriguing concept. But you know something’s wrong when the money idea behind a movie is most effectively expressed during its opening credits.
That title sequence, created by the Imaginary Forces company (whose co-founder Kyle Cooper reinvented the craft with his work on Se7en, another numerically concerned suspenser), offers up multiple permutations of “The 23 Enigma.” To wit, any number of names, dates and significant historical events can be broken down into strings of figures that add up to 23. What does it all mean? In Fernley Phillips’ script, that’s a question that comes to obsess Walter Sparrow (Carrey), a typical family man who lives a typical suburban life with his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen) and son Robin (Logan Lerman), and makes his living as a dog catcher with a penchant for acting silly while tracking errant pooches. (You can take the actor out of Ace Ventura, but…) One night, a series of circumstances (destiny?) lead Agatha to pick up a book called The Number 23 and show it to Walter, who becomes captivated by the story contained within its crudely typed pages—one seeming to mirror that of his own life.
Via heavily stylized fantasy (or are they?) sequences, we’re introduced to the tome’s protagonist, a detective who calls himself Fingerling (also played by Carrey), who has become fixated on the number 23 to the point where it takes over his existence and ultimately leads him to murder. The more Walter delves into the book’s mysteries, the clearer it becomes that he’s fated to follow in Fingerling’s deadly footsteps (especially since other actors from the real-world scenes play parts in the tale-within-the-tale as well). Had the movie followed through on its portrait of obsession, and really delved into the dark recesses of a mind that could become fixated on a fictional story—or a simple pair of numerals—Schumacher and Phillips might have really been on to something here.
Instead, the movie turns a corner about halfway through, avoiding truly disturbing (or horrific) territory as Walter begins to play amateur sleuth and attempts to track down The Number 23’s author, Topsy Kretts (a homonym I’m ashamed I didn’t figure out long before the characters did). Instead of becoming a haunted, isolated figure, Walter brings his wife and kid along on his quest as if it’s some kind of offbeat vacation, and Agatha becomes so devoted to helping him out that, like so many foolish heroines before her, she thinks nothing of walking into a spooky, abandoned institution in the middle of the night in search of clues. What she finds there eventually points the way to a resolution that is disappointingly familiar from a lot of other films in the past decade or so, and one that any seasoned fan of thrillers will see coming a reel or so before it’s revealed.
Still, if The Number 23 couldn’t be as scary as it had the potential to be, it could at least have been more fun, particularly with Carrey (who was both amusing and threatening as the Riddler in Schumacher’s Batman Forever) in the lead. No one does comedic mania like he does, but, Walter’s occasional wisecracks notwithstanding, the intention here was clearly to allow him to stretch in a straight dramatic direction, and Schumacher follows suit. The result is a collection of imagery and motifs (particularly a Canine Harbinger of Death) that become increasingly silly the more the director insists we take them seriously. Even as Matthew (The Fountain) Libatique’s cinematography drenches the film in eye-catching atmosphere, the film loses its grip emotionally, and the overamped editing of too many sequences strand us outside the story instead of within its protagonist’s tortured headspace. How sad that a movie with such a promising and potentially unique premise turns out to be as much of a letdown as so many other films with numbers in the title.
