Three is a magic number, bet on lucky number seven, and beware of unlucky thirteen. Twenty-three is now the new number to keep an eye out for.

Conspiracy theorists unite in the theatres showing this weekend’s new thriller, The Number 23, a film about how obsession and paranoia can take over a man’s life and the lives of his loved ones. The man in question is Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey). Walter works for Animal Control, which makes him a glorified dogcatcher. When someone has a lingering canine around their restaurant or a snake in their sewage system (hey, it could happen), they call Animal Control, which in turn radios Walter. He goes home everyday to a beautiful wife, a teenage son, and an average life that anyone can be proud of. This all changes when he’s kept late at work on is birthday (February 3rd or 2/3…it’s a theme) making him tardy to pick his wife Agatha up from work. His wife grows bored with waiting and wanders into a bookstore after a bright red book catches her eye. This book, titled The Number 23, proves to be a great birthday present for Walter for he has an easy and immediate relation to the main character, maybe a little more than he wanted. His new way to burn time eventually consumes his every waking moment, creating an obsession with both the similarities of his life and Fingerling’s (the book’s main character) and the number 23 itself. READ ON »

Suspense is built when you have no idea what will happen next. When the main character is walking down that long, dark hallway and the violins from the movie’s soundtrack are screeching and everyone in the theatre are on the edge of their seats, that’s suspense. In The Messengers, there is no real suspense. You can see everything coming a mile away like the meteor in Deep Impact. Every dark corner has a nightlight and every locked door is made of glass. It’s creepy, but a little disappointing.

The Messengers is like three thilller/horror movies in one. First it starts out like Darkness. There are ghoulish looking ghosts haunting a house that only attack the hot teenage daughter. She tries to tell everyone, but no one believes her. Whenever you see a dark room or a shadowy hallway, you’re predisposed to think something will happen, and then it does. Throughout the whole film, these dead people are causing the poor girl to lose her mind and the only people she can turn to is a four year-old boy who can’t talk and the town’s go-to pretty boy. Then the movie becomes The Haunting. The ghouls are altering parts of the house, and then changing it back. Things are flying around, then it’s as if nothing’s happened. What starts out as an isolated case of harassment towards an innocent girl turns into an all-out brawl against all the inhabitants of the house. Lastly, the movie becomes the Amityville Farmhouse for reasons I cannot give without me spoiling it for you. Trust me, it’s almost comical at this point.

The acting in this movie is as atrocious as the lack of originality. Dylan ‘I Wish The Practice Was Still On The Air’ McDermott and Penelope ‘Where Have I Been Since Carlito’s Way?’ Ann Miller have less chemistry than a junior high science class, which makes some of their scenes almost unbearable to watch. Kristen Stewart plays Jess, the freaked-out teenage daughter with a ‘dark past’. She is less than stellar in any scene that that doesn’t involve her being scared. The rest of the supporting cast are just weird and creepy and don’t help with any of the laughable dialogue.

All of that, along with bad cinematography (a lot of weird camera angles and gratuitous spinning) and a title that doesn’t relate to the movie, makes this movie NOT worth seeing.  At all.