The Asylum, the notorious studio behind such "mockbusters" as "Titanic 2," "Snakes On A Train," and "Transmorphers" seems to be morphing itself lately. When they first hit the scene back in the late 90's they were just another low budget production company that specialized in genre films, like Maverick and Full Moon Video. One of Asylum's earlier release, "King Of The Ants" is terrifying on a soul crushing level. I watched that movie when it came out, 11 years ago, and still can't get it out of my head. But then they realized the real money was in making fast movies with similar titles to current hits and rushing them to the shelves of Blockbuster so people could be "Grandma'ed" (A term my sister came up with, meaning you got the wrong movie because the title was so similar.)
And although in the past year alone they released "Atlantic Rim," "Android Cop," and "AE: Apocalypse Earth"; all riffs are recent films, there seems to be a departure from this business model. They tried coming out on a movie called "Age Of The Hobbits" claiming it was based on real life. This as when a major film studio finally did step in and shut them down. The movie was eventually released as the generic "Clash Of The Empires."
So what does any of this have to do with 13/13/13? The Asylum seems to be splitting in two: On the one hand they made millions off of their recent hit "Sharknado." The whole point of that movie, and it's marketing, is that it was terrible. But recent films like "13/13/13" show a self-aware need for Asylum to grow their brand past garbage filmmaking.
The problem is: "13/13/13" has a garbage budget and if you start off with steak and run it through a meat grinder, you never end up with steak again.
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| SPOILER ALERT: This movie will spoil your appetite. |
"13/13/13" is an odd take on the zombie genre. Basically, because of leap years and so forth, there is an extra month added every 120 years and because this time the mysterious 13th month happens during 2012, the Mayan calender end date (remember that, guys?), anyone who is not born on a leap day goes insane. It's a massive global infection of the worst type of zombie: a sadistic and smart one.
The infected in "13/13/13" are vicious and cunning yet suicidal as well. They don't mind killing themselves or their fellow infected. Sometimes they do it just because it's funny. Zombie purists may see a resemblance in the horrifying and grotesque comic series "Crossed" and it does feel a lot like it. Because these infected are so unpredictable it adds a layer of tension not usually seen in the mass wall of slow zombies or the sprinting chaos of the fast zombies. These infected use crowbars to open doors, cars to run each other over, and guns to shoot each other's brains out.
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| You'd think if the infected attacked each other you'd be safer. You'd be wrong. |
The only two uninfected we see are Jack and Candace. Jack needs to find his daughter and Candace wants to get as far away from the city as possible. Armed with a knife and an axe, the duo works their way through several intense set pieces.
But is 13/13/13 a good movie? I keep avoiding that question, if you haven't noticed by now, because I don't want to answer it. In essence, in it's pure undiluted form, yes, it is a good movie with alot of good ideas. The problem is the acting consistently drags it down to the level of a SyFy Channel movie. The odd balance between these two tugging forces makes the movie sit uncomfortably in the middle.
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| That curtain isn't bulletproof, dude. Oh yeah, forgot, you're crazy. Carry on. |
For example: One of the plot points is Jack trying to find his daughter. He doesn't believe in the theory that only leap year born people are immune to the insanity and for good reason: the only person who subscribes to that theory, Candace, said that the crazy people don't kill themselves even though Jack's wife did kill herself after going insane. So as the audience we are getting limited pieces of information from an uninformed source and we don't even know if it is true or not so why would Jack?
What we do know is Jack's daughter is infected. She was one of the first to go insane and while Jack is caring for his wife at the hospital, his daughter cracks a man's head open and attacks two others. A more generic film would have had Jack look for his daughter and find her and then it is revealed to us that she is insane. In this movie, since we already know she's infected, we DON'T want him to find his daughter and see what she has become.
There's also the protracted subplot of two brothers who think they're in a bunker (Jack's house) is under attack and this is just like the time they were in Korea during the war and the Americans invaded their homeland. They're both white and under 30, so their insane ramblings gives us a view into what these infected people are actually going through.
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| Ah, nothing funnier than drinking a few beers and getting stabbed by your brother. |
All of that being said, the acting is mediocre. Jack is the standout and he manages to carry the film as much as he can. The scenes between the brothers goes from wacky to borderline melancholy and you get a sense of a deeper relationship between them. "13/13/13" definitely had potential but in the end it's cheap budget won out. Give this filmmaker and his crew a bigger budget and more time and this movie could have been a real cult classic.
So again, is "13/13/13" good? I think so. But you might not. If you can look past the flaws (the worst one being a woman trying to stab a man in the neck and missing, but then him still reacting to the stab *groan*) you'll find a gem. If you can't though and get hung up on things like low-budget casts, wait for it on cable, but it's definitely worth checking out.
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