Joel Schumacher’s limp-wristed thriller, The Number 23, works on the pretense that if you’re too busy doing arithmetic throughout the entire movie, you won’t actually notice how incredibly awful it is. The problem here is that once you get sick of playing Where’s Waldo? with every conspiracy nut’s two favorite digits (and you will get sick of it), there will be nothing left to distract you from the rest of this self-consciously stylized trainwreck.

The film tells the story of run-of-the-mill dog catcher, Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey), a middle-aged family man who’s quiet life quickly spirals out of control when his wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), gives him a curious, self-published book for his birthday. Sparrow becomes enamored with the strange tale of a hard-boiled detective, distressingly named Fingerling (again played by Carrey), and immediately starts drawing parallels between himself and the gumshoe, no matter how reaching they may seem. It isn’t long before Fingerling’s dangerous obsession with the number 23 becomes Sparrow’s own, potentially leading him down the same twisted, murderous path as the character, haunting almost every aspect of his life. I’d say that’s a pretty remarkable feat for any novel, much less one that by all appearances seems to have been written by someone with a severe mental handicap. Certainly makes for a crappy birthday present, though.

The underlying concept is one that balances dangerously between interesting and absurd, and in the clumsy hands of Schumacher and first-time writer Fernley Phillips, it falls soundly into the latter. The script is practically littered with plot holes big enough to drive a Buick through, and the fumbled attempts at David Lynchian caliber weird will leave you shaking your head in disbelief. By the time you’re formally introduced to the bulldog that serves as “protector of souls”, you’re liable to have a neck cramp.

And Carrey doesn’t fare much better, barely treading water in the role of Sparrow, and feeling hopelessly miscast as the dark and mysterious Fingerling. His forced, brooding mannerisms always feel just shy of satire, as do his strangely lispy, poor-man’s Philip Marlowe voice-overs. Throw in a couple late 90’s style tattoos, and a penchant for clutching a saxophone that he never seems to actually play (not that it would help), and you’ve got yourself one supremely nerdy excuse for a bad ass. His cause is certainly not furthered by the fact that most of the dialogue in the book’s universe is ludicrous at best, betraying a screenplay writer who’s watched far too many Film Noirs without actually listening to any of them. Much like The Black Dhalia, another rather painful throwback to the days of Raymond Chandler, the weak writing and schticky performances make for many moments of unintentional comedy (but not quite enough of these moments to warrant actually sitting through the film).

The best thing I can manage to say about The Number 23 is that it’s not incredibly hard to look at. Matthew Libatique, the talented cinematographer behind Pi and The Fountain, jumps through visual hoops that almost make you forget how ridiculous the rest of the film is. Almost. His storybook-esque introduction into the book’s world proved to be the highlight of the entire production, and while Fingerling’s stomping grounds often feel like a somewhat transparent mesh of Se7en and Sin City, they still prove to be far more interesting than the characters that live within them.

But no amount of clever art direction and artificial lighting can mask the preposterous and overwrought mystery, particularly as it accelerates towards its mind-numbingly illogical reveal. If I had been at all emotionally invested in the film upon discovery of the big “twist”, I might have actually felt insulted. Fortunately, I had stopped giving a damn long before it actually got there. While Schumacher’s greatest crime against humanity remains putting nipples on Batman, The Number 23 can safely be added to his growing list of monumental failures.

I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for Roy Solomon (Dylan McDermott), the well-meaning, down-on-his-luck father in The Messengers, the first Hollywood offering from Asian horror sensations the Pang brothers. Him and his urban kin have had a rather rough go at it lately (though for a long time we’re not quite certain why that is, or why we should even care), and he only wants to start fresh, relocating to a run-down “fixer up’er” in the middle of God’s country to try his hand at farming America’s last great crop: sunflower seeds. Yet Roy and I have some disturbingly different ideas on what kind of home qualifies as a “fixer up’er”. To me that term would cover anything with ample amounts of cracked paint, leaky plumbing, and maybe an annoying bug infestation or two. He, on the other hand, expands the defintion to include all manner of dilapidated hell-holes that look like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only minus the bone room and meat hooks. Of course, it wouldn’t be a formulaic haunted house movie without the unwitting family moving blithely into a home obviously inhabited by a great evil with no regard for proper maintenance. And a formulaic haunted house movie is exactly what the Pang brothers have set out to create.

The Messengers starts off strongly enough with a black and white flashback detailing the horrific events that led this once stately manor down the road to ruin. The opening images whip by, as we hang on every lightning quick cut to catch sight of a monster always kept ever so slightly out of view. It’s an attention grabbing taste of what you’d expect from a pair of directors ready to make their mark in Hollywood after achieving hometown acclaim with 2002’s The Eye. But it’s over before we know it, and we’re soon launched into present day to ride shotgun with the dull-as-dishwater Solomon brood on their car ride into misery.

It isn’t long before the film shifts from bad to worse, as the horror movie cliches are laid on hard and fast. From the two children (teenage Jess, and her mute brother Ben) whom are cursed with the ability to see phenomenon unknown to their parents, to the ominous flock of crows who spend their time either casting murderous silhouettes across every inch of the sky, or outright attacking anyone who dares tread below, we’ve seen all of these ideas before, and very often in better movies. But as capably as the Pangs crib notes from the likes of The Sixth Sense and The Amityville Horror, they are seemingly completely unaware of how to recreate any of the tension and suspense that made those films famous. Jump scares and false alarms come in abundance, and the screenplay is littered with moments that involve grey skinned ghosts spastically scuttling from room to room, but all quickly fall victim to the law of diminishing returns. While it’s certain the Pangs aren’t lacking in style and cinematic flair, they have a serious problem with setting limits. This is most notably apparent in an excrutiatingly drawn out scene played from the opposing perspectives of Jess and Ben, as we watch the little boy quietly observe a ghost sneaking up behind his oblivious sister. Clearly meant to be one of the movie’s dramatic highpoints, it instead drags on to almost comical effect, feeling less like a fright and more like an overly long series of shots involving foreheads and finger pointing.

And the story certainly doesn’t fare any better, and is in fact practically non-existent. You’d think a script operating on an airtight running time of just under 90 minutes would make quick work of the kind of character building and background exploration we’d need to feel attached to this family, but screenplay writer Mark Wheaton apparently disagrees. We’re certainly made aware that Jess is an outcast in her own home, and that her pissed off and fed up mother (just barely brought to life by an incredibly wooden performance from Penelope Ann Miller) wants nothing to do with her, but we spend far too much of the movie wondering why. By the time they decide to enlighten us, just shortly before they introduce one of the most ridiculous plot twists imaginable, we’re far beyond giving a damn.

Despite the fact I wasn’t blown away by The Eye, I had decently high expectations for what Danny and Oxide Pang could accomplish with a Hollywood-size budget. Sadly, what should’ve been a refreshing dose of Asian-style horror ended up instead falling victim to every genre convention in the book. And banality aside, there’s something seriously wrong with a horror movie when the scariest idea it puts forth is a father willing to take in a shotgun wielding drifter mere minutes after meeting him.