The psychological thriller The Number 23 stars Jim Carrey as a man whose life unravels after he comes into contact with an obscure book titled The Number 23. As he reads the book, he becomes increasingly convinced that it is based on his own life. His obsession with the number 23 starts to consume him, and he begins to realize the book forecasts far graver consequences for his life than he could have ever imagined.
With a well thought out plot and a storyline that is intriguing and makes the mystery unravel little by little, I sure got more out of watching The Number 23 than I first had thought. Since Jim Carrey did such a wonderful job in Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind I was more than sure that he would manage to pull off some true seriousness here as well, which he did. What I was worried about concerning the overall movie though was how it was all gonna come together in the end, the very outcome where filmmakers often try hard but oftentimes fail at delivering. But this flick did actually come together in a very good way in the end and managed to pull off some twist and turns which made it a very interesting piece to watch. For a while there, before 23 was released, it seemed like it was being promoted a little too much as a "scary" flick and that is something it was not. False marketing leads, for most of the time, to downfall... just take M. Night Shyamalan's The Village for instance.
 
The film tells the story of an animal control officer named Walter Sparrow who gets a book entitled The Number 23 from his wife on his birthday. He starts to read it and finds a lot of similarities between the main characters life and his own. As he keeps reading the similarities just grows stronger and it seems like the book's fictional character, a detective named Fingerling, is actually, somehow, Walter himself. Fingerling soon becomes obsessed with the number 23 and so does Walter, and it doesn't take long before the number starts to control his life. He suffers from horrible nightmares, just like Fingerling and as every day grows more dark, Walter needs to start digging to solve the mystery of the book; who wrote it and was it written only for him to read, and how can he unlock the secrets behind the number 23?
There are many interesting things to be found within the film itself. Visually it is absolutely stunning at times but luckily this one delivers more than just good looks. It's easy to feel for the main character Walter Sparrow (Carrey) and it's not hard at all, or unrealistic, to see him becoming more and more obsessed with the number that is 23. I think this is one of those the less you know the better type of flicks, but since it's a commercial film people tend to talk about it and might share their negative thought with you. What it comes down to is that this is a film you need to see for yourself, you might not like it but it deserves to be given a shot for sure.
I gotta admit that this movie had me at the start and all the way through. While it was not fantastic it sure was worth the time and just got better as it kept going. While it may not be scary in the sense of the word, The Number 23 is a very dark flick that has a good feel to it and if you're looking for a good thriller to satisfy your appetite, The Number 23 is more then enough.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2007
DIRECTOR: Joel Schumacher
WRITING CREDITS: Fernley Phillips
GENRE: Thriller
CAST: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 98 min
RATING: 7/10
Number 23, The Website/IMDB Click here
Number 23, The Trailer Click here
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