The Number 23

Although there are several elements within it worth recommending, including Jim Carrey’s gritty and surprisingly effective performance, The Number 23 is ultimately undone by its thoroughly absurd premise (which, while initially intriguing, eventually becomes flat-out silly). Fernley Phillips’ screenplay, which casts Carrey as a mild-mannered dog catcher named Walter, emphasizes coincidence to an absurd degree, as Carrey’s character starts to notice the number 23 in virtually every aspect of his life. Spurred on by a mysterious novel, Walter finds himself becoming more and more obsessed with a decades-old murder – much to the concern of his wife (Virginia Madsen) and son (Logan Lerman). Director Joel Schumacher generally does an effective job of infusing The Number 23 with an appropriately dark sensibility, although the filmmaker’s use of gothic visuals, primarily during sequences in which Carrey and Madsen re-enact various passages from the titular novel, becomes tedious almost immediately. It certainly doesn’t help that the stuff from the book comes off as impossibly bland, with Carrey trapped within the confines of an egregiously generic cop thriller. Not that the central storyline is much better; Phillips’ continual use of the number 23 as a sinister element within Walter’s life might impress numerologists but will almost surely leave most rational viewers rolling their eyes. It’s ultimately painfully clear that Walter’s increasingly paranoid behavior would’ve been better suited to a low-key drama, as the film simply does not work as a thriller.

** out of ****