Not bad, but it could have been better.

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2007)

The Number 23 tells the story of a man who starts to read a book called The Number 23, about a detective who begins to go crazy connecting the number 23 to everything, eventually ending with the detective committing murder. This scares the man because he finds a large amount of points in the book that mirror his own life. He himself begins to go crazy with the number, and as he reads on, he finds that there is more mystery involved with the book's origins than he could ever imagine. This is a well made, entertaining film, but it fell flat towards the end.
First off, this movie is made very well. The visual style of it is very dark and Gothic which was kind of cool. The scenes depicting what was happening in the book were awesome. They had a kind of surrealistic tone to them which was cool. It looked kind of like film noir which made it look really good. The movie was a pretty good mystery once the main character begins looking for a killer that's on the loose. Unfortunately, the movie just isn't that creepy. Some of the things said about 23 are a little chilling, but it just seems pushed and overused in some parts. This movie, like most of its kind, has a twist ending. Though I won't say what the big twist is, I suppose I can say without giving anything away for sure that it's a highly overused and clichéd twist ending that I was unable to find surprising due to the fact that I've seen it done so many times. In my opinion, the movie was pretty good right up until the last, oh let's say, 23 minutes.
Jim Carrey's performance was surprisingly good. I usually don't like it when he plays a serious role, but because there was a few humorous points, this role seemed to suit him. His performance as the detective in the novel was actually really cool. Everybody else's performances were just okay.
Overall, this was a cool, well made movie that kind of fell apart in the end. There was definitely room for improvement.
6.5/10