The Number 23

Looks pretty cool

http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/thenumber23/

Stars Jim Carey. I think this deviates far enough from his comedy work for me to be able to get past him as Ace Ventura.

I was tempted by it, but I don't trust it not to turn into a slasher pic, which I don't go for. So I will wait for the reviews and synopsis, see what it's all about.


The premise looks very interesting.

I doubt it's slasher-like, but I would agree that the trailer probably makes it look a lot better than it actually is.

I've seen two different sets of trailers - each give it a different angle. what the hell is this movie about?

but it looks too scary for me. I'd rather not have sleepless nights.

Okay... here's what I've grabbed off of wikipedia, for you, Illuminate:


The Number 23 is a suspense film starring Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, and Danny Huston, directed by Joel Schumacher. It was released on February 23, 2007. The plot involves an obsession with the 23 Enigma, the Discordian belief that all incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23, some permutation of the number 23, or a number related to the number 23.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.


Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is an animal control officer married to cake shop owner, Agatha (Virginia Madsen); they have a son, Robin (Logan Lerman).

It's almost five o'clock when Walter gets a call to catch a dog. He catches the dog and notices on the tag its name is Ned. Walter gets distracted and the dog bites his arm, then runs away ending up at a cemetery, sitting at one particular grave. The dog gets away after Walter catches up to him.

He is a little late to meet his wife, and while she is waiting outside a bookstore, she sees a book called "The Number 23" and buys it.

Walter starts reading the book and sees some similarities between himself and the main character, a detective named Fingerling. The main character explains how he got the name Fingerling from an obscure children's book, and Walter discovers he has the same book. There are other striking similarities between the two as the book goes on. Also of note, the book details Fingerling's meeting with the "Suicide Blonde" whose obsession with the number 23 drives her to murder and suicide. Her explanations and calculations of almost everything - including names, birthdates, and colors - all adding up to 23, drive her insane. These calculations are scribbled all over her walls.

Walter tells his wife and son about this phenomenon from the book, and shows them his calculations, done on their dining room walls, in which his name, house number and social security number all add up to 23, as well. Walter visits Dr. Isaac French (Danny Huston), a friend of Agatha's, whom he hopes will explain the 23 theory.

Walter takes the book back to the bookstore and learns it is self published and the author, Topsy Kretts, never released any other books.

Fingerling's story continues. It begins to make Walter believe that Dr. French has romantic designs on Agatha. Walter thinks anything associated with the number 23 is also evil because 2 divided by 3 equals 0.6 recurring, or the Number of the Beast, as Dr. French explained.

Walter's continued paranoia makes him have dreams of killing Agatha, again paralleling the book. Walter has such a vivid dream that he leaves the house in the middle of the night, going to King Edward's Hotel, requesting room 23, to finish the book.

The book stops on chapter 22 with Fingerling on a balcony deciding if he will jump, after the murder of Fabrizia.

Walter sees Ned again and follows him to the grave of Laura Tollins (Rhona Mitra) who died when she was 23; her body was never found. Walter looks into her death and discovers Laura was sleeping with her professor, somewhat like Fabrizia. Walter thinks the professor wrote the book as a confession and goes to see him, yet the visit yields nothing. The man proclaims his innocence of the murder and of being the author, and suggests that "[Walter's] problems are greater than his own".

Robin finds a P.O. Box address hidden in the back of the book and they send 23 boxes filled with packing peanuts to it. They wait for Topsy Kretts, who becomes panicked in the mailbox place and slits his own throat. Inside the man's pockets, Agatha finds an ID card belonging to a mental institution, showing that the man is Dr. Leary, and tells Walter nothing of it. She goes to the abandoned institute, finds Leary's old office, where the walls are scribbled with the number 23. In a cell covered in calculations of the number 23, she finds an old box with Walter's name on it.

Meanwhile, Robin and Walter, who have been examining the book, discover that every 23rd word on every 23rd page spells out a message, which directs them to dig under a monument in town called "The Stairway to Heaven." There, they discover a skeleton, presumably Laura Tollins', but when they return with police, the bones have disappeared. Agatha arrives with Dr. French, only raising Walter's hackles more, and they return home. On the way, they encounter Ned sitting in the road. Walter accelerates, intending to kill him, but stops at the last second when Agatha grabs his arm, her fingers stained with dirt.

As Agatha washes her dirt-stained hands at their home, Walter confronts her about taking the bones and accuses her of writing the book. She tells Walter that, in fact, he wrote the book, and shows him the contents of the box from the Institute. In the box there are detective comics, the manuscript of "The Number 23" with Walter's name on it and a saxophone, the instrument Fingerling played in the book. Walter runs angrily upstairs in disbelief.

He returns to the hotel room where he tears down the wallpaper and finds chapter 23 of the book written on the wall, identifying himself as the author, declaring it his confession and explaining everything; Walter's father killed himself after Walter's mother's death. His suicide note was just pages of things that added up to the number 23. Walter loved Laura Tollins and was obsessed with 23 because of his father. Laura eventually began sleeping with her professor and when Walter confronted her about this, declared that she never loved him. He went into a rage, stabbing her and burying her in the park. Ned observed him burying Laura. Like the character in the book, the professor was arrested for the murder. Walter goes to the hotel room, writes the book, then jumps off the balcony. He survives and ends up in the institute where Dr. Leary reads the manuscript, publishes it and becomes obsessed with number 23 himself. Walter has suffered memory loss because of the fall. The day Walter leaves the institute is the day he met Agatha, 13 years earlier. Walter now turns himself in, thereby freeing the professor and finally relieving his conscience.

At the end of the movie you see the Bible reading from Numbers 32:23 "You may be sure that your sin will find you out." This shows that in the end, it really was fate which sought Walter out to pay for his sin.

Sounds like the same plot as the Machinist, except more convoluted.

I've never heard of that movie, Whidden, so I couldn't tell you.

Still, it sounds pretty freaky. That would be wicked to find out that it was you, all along.

The Machinist, he had all these crazy things happening to him, and it was just that he drunk drove over some folks, killed them, and then the guilt drove him insane, made him see things.

Sounds like the same plot, cept with books and Jimbo.

In the Machinist, the lead actor was the American Psycho and Batman Begins guy, whose name escapes me at the moment. The thing that drove the plot was that he was a complete insomniac and hadn't slept AT ALL in like a year, and as the movie progresses, you come to find out why.

This one seems similar in that you go on a journey to find out if Carrey's character is really the one mentioned in the crazy-ass book.

I wanted to see the Machinist so bad when it was out, but I've just realized it was never released here and I totally forgot about it.

Read the whole run down of the story. I guess I should've figured it would reveal the ending, but it seems interesting enough I still may see it, but I think I'll wait for the video, regardless.

it does sound pretty interesting. One of the trailers I saw emphasized the "number of the beast" angle so I'm like NOT GONNA SEE IT! But it doesn't sound like it's the main part - just a small part. I didn't read the entire write up b/c it's interesting enough to see - don't want to spoil too much of it. Maybe i'll wait for it on dvd and see it.

The machinist looked like a good movie. I love Christian Bale. I might consider that one too. Thanks

No, I don't believe that is the angle of the movie, at all.
Still, it's a thriller, and meant to scare ya, a bit.

I saw this over the weekend, it was pretty well done. I enjoyed it. There were a couple of scenes where I expected Jim Carey to go all rubber-faced, but it didn't happen. But he was pretty solid, as was the movie.

Didnt really like this movie...wasnt that good

I can imagine it's not for everyone's tastes. There were a couple of times I was wondering where it was going, and there was one moment in particular that still doesn't seem to make much sense, but I still liked it

I'm gonna catch it on cable when it comes out. So expect me in here in about two years.

I saw it a few weeks back. It was pretty good. I could have done without the sex scenes, and I think the ending was crap, but the rest was ok.