This 2007 horror thriller was the last major release by the late journeyman director Joel Schumacher (1939-2020). That he was in his declining years is evident in the lackluster filmmaking on display; Schumacher’s earlier films include ST. ELMO’S FIRE, THE LOST BOYS, FALLING DOWN and TIGERLAND, none of which I’d call great, but all of which handily outdo THE NUMBER 23.
What makes it notable is the presence of Jim Carrey in the main role. It was a part of Carrey’s 00s attempt (with THE MAJESTIC, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS) at broadening his range from the screwball comedies with which he made his name; he’s largely returned to comedies in the years since, which demonstrates the impact this not-very-successful film had.
Okay: we have a mild mannered (if eccentric) dog catcher named Walter Sparrow (Carrey). One night, on his birthday, he gets bitten by a dog and meets his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen) in a bookstore, where they happen upon a self-published novel entitled THE NUMBER 23.
Sparrow reads the book, a noirish thriller about Fingerling, a character whose background and personality are remarkably similar to Sparrow’s own. We see passages from THE NUMBER 23 depicted (NEVERENDING STORY-like) in highly stylized fantasy sequences in which Carrey and Madsen play the lead roles.
In this narrative-within-a-narrative Fingerling is a hardboiled private dick investigating the suicide of a young blonde. Said blonde, it seems, was obsessed with the number 23, which causes Fingerling, and by extension Walter Sparrow, to become similarly obsessed. Furthering the fictional pull, Fingerling’s wife Fabrizia is having an affair, and the increasingly unhinged Sparrow comes to suspect that Agatha is doing likewise.
As Sparrow’s sanity further erodes he decides that Agatha is in on a murderous plot against him, and that she had a hand in writing THE NUMBER 23. But then the possibility is brought up that Sparrow himself might have written the book, which takes the film to an entirely different, and much sillier, level.
The template for this movie appears to have been David Fincher’s SEVEN (1995), a film Schumacher previously referenced by filming a script (1999’s 8MM) written by its author Kevin Andrew Walker. Here Fincher’s work is recalled in the avant-garde opening credits sequence and cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s dark-hued imagery. And those aren’t the only derivative elements: note a plot point involving a chat with an incarcerated criminal, whose origins I probably shouldn’t have to enumerate (hint: it involves the words “silence” and “lambs”).
Schumacher’s trademark visual pizazz is reserved for the sequences dramatizing passages from the NUMBER 13 novel, which are more in keeping with the music videos he directed for INXS, Smashing Pumpkins and other bands. Schumacher also insists (as he did in 8MM) on saddling the film with an obnoxiously sappy conclusion that celebrates the power of love and the joys of family–and so feels entirely out of place.
Jim Carrey, for his part, can’t help but temper his dramatic emoting with snatches of broad comedy. That, however, doesn’t excuse the fact that the film grows quite unintentionally funny as it advances, particularly in its depiction of a satanic dog (which, as SUMMER OF SAM proved, is always a dubious artistic choice).
Longtime horror movie veteran Virginia Madsen is a most welcome presence (and looks every bit as good here, in her mid-forties, as she did twenty years earlier), although she can’t overcome the film’s many problems, which are initially tolerable but gradually overwhelm whatever virtues it might possess.
(P.S.: Look for Andy Kaufman’s partner and biographer Bob Zmuda, who was fictionalized in the Jim Carrey starrer MAN ON THE MOON and had a tiny role in Joel Schumacher’s BATMAN FOREVER, as a hotel desk clerk.)
Vital Statistics
THE NUMBER 23
New Line Cinema
Director: Joel Schumacher
Producers: Beau Flynn, Tipp Vinson
Screenplay: Fernley Phillips
Cinematography: Matthew Libatique
Editing: Mark Stevens
Cast: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, Rhona Mitra, Michelle Arthur, Mark Pellegrino, Paul Butcher, David Stifel, Corey Stoll, Ed Lauter, Troy Kotsur, Walter Soo Hoo, Patricia Belcher, Rudolph Willrich, John Fink, Bob Zmuda