The Number 23 Movie Review

The Number 23 (2007)

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Written by: Fernley Phillips
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston, Mark Pellegrino, Corey Stoll
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
Walter Sparrow becomes obsessed with a novel that he believes was written about him, as more and more similarities between himself and his literary alter ego seem to arise.

Verdict
The movie's main goal is to make you as obsessed with the number 23 as everyone in the movie is. It's a strange movie from the beginning, but the story keeps becoming more unbelievable. It expects us to take quite a few leaps in logic that ultimately make this difficult to take seriously. It's a sequence of wondering whether the movie really expects me to believe what it's presenting. On the other hand, it's a strange curiosity that will cause you to see the number 23 for the next few days. It's so easy to turn any set of numbers into 23 through easy manipulation.
Skip it.

Review
This opens with several conspiracies about the number 23 and how it relates to important dates and historical figures. If a number sequence doesn't have 2 or 3 in it, just add or subtract the numbers until you reach 23.

Jim Carrey plays Walter Sparrow

The movie starts on "February 3," get it 23. Many coincidences conspire to bring Walter to this book, The Number 23. He's intrigued when he begins reading, following a boy in a small town that wants to be a detective. Walter begins noticing similarities between himself and the character Fingerling. His wife cautions him that while she liked Fingerling at the beginning, she didn't by the end. This character meets a woman obsessed with the number 23, and Fingerling in turn begins to see it everywhere. Walter too begins seeing 23 everywhere as a result of recency illusion. The number is everywhere as Walter adds and subtracts to arrive there. His friend Isaac (Danny Huston) points out that once you look for the number, you'll see it everywhere and that 23 in particular is good at the game. The book ends abruptly. Distraught, Fingerling makes a series of bad choices, but there's no finality. The book ends with chapter twenty-two.

It's a fun exercise as the movie tries to make the audience as obsessive as the characters. Once you start looking you see 23 everywhere. That or you can force 2 or 3 out of any set of numbers you might see.

Jim Carrey plays Fingerling

Rather convenient coincidences lead Walter to clues, like a dog that takes him to a tombstone which in turn leads him to an incarcerated man Walter believes wrote the books as a confession. The plot progressions are quite contrived and convenient. This frequently asks you to suspend your disbelief. It reaches a point where Walter sees a man kill himself but doesn't think the situation has gotten out of hand. That same guy leads Walter's wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen) to a mental institution. Is this movie some kind of fever dream or hallucination? It's wild and these characters buy in completely so quickly. No one ever questions what's happening. It reaches a point where Walter holds his wife at knife point, accusing her of writing the book.

As much as this movie asks you to believe, the conclusion goes even further. It's difficult to fully buy in.

SPOILERS

It turns out Walter wrote the book. His experiences inspired this confession, and he, like Fingerling, attempted suicide. Walter injured his head which blocked out the previous year of his life and everything in the book. The strange thing is that he should remember the mental institution that rehabilitated him. The brain injury didn't erase his future memories. Once you start thinking about this, a lot of this movie doesn't make sense. One of his doctors became obsessed with and published Walter's book, only to kill himself when Walter tracks him down. Why? Other than to create another plot point for the movie.