The Number 23 (2007, DVD)

In case you weren't aware, there's a real-life longstanding belief that all incidents and events can be directly connected to the Number 23. (Ex: 9/11/2001, take Month 9 + the 2 & 1 off 2001 = 12; 12 + Day 11th = 23 !! Oklahoma City and Atomic Bomb happended on the 23rd !! Etc....) - Part phenomenon, part cult, it's spawned quite a bit of literature, lots of conjecture, and now a major motion picture.
"The Number 23" (UNRATED) is the first-time screenwriter Fernley Phillips and Director Joel Schumacher have teamed up to create an eerie, absorbing, massive over-the-top thriller that swiftly reaches an unfathomably unnerving conclusion. - As an Animal Control Officer who finds himself sucked into a weird vortex of paranoia and obsession and HELL upon reading a vorasciously disturbing book called "The Number 23", Jim Carrey makes for a completely effective lead choice. He brings a dramatic and edgy-irony to a very serious role, impressively handling a wide range of emotions as an ordinary Joe caught in an extraordinary evil web.
Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, a loving husband and father who slogs through his thankless job rounding up the town's wayward animals. One day, his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen) randomly buys him a copy of "The Number 23" from a used bookstore, intrigued by the tattered old novel after a quick read. Though Agatha finds it a noirish story of a brooding Detective fixated on the "Hidden Power" of the Number 23, Walter takes the book seriously. He begins seeing signs of the mysterious digits everywhere. (We're talking everywhere). From his birthday (2/3); to the day He and Agatha first met (the 23rd); to the number of letters in his full name (23); to every other date, address, parking space, and room number he sees, one way or another it all adds up to the same strange thing.
What's worse, Walter finds that "Number 23" parallels his own life — from childhood on up — and becomes convinced that the books passages are telling him something. The fact that the novel abruptly ends at Chapter 22., adds to his anxiety. He's sure the missing final chapter holds the key to his own future; a matter of life and death.
Increasing frenzy ensues; over what he believes is more than just numerical happenstance. Eventually prompting the downward spiral that spawns Walter's desperate search for the novel's author, the oddly-named Topsy Kretts (say it slowly...)
Walter's downward spiral is so well done. Carrey has gone where only someone in his caliber could take such over-the-top material., yet derive a horror fulfilled story. (Leaving his stereotyped comic genius behind).
He remains sympathetic, despite a slew of shadowy possibilities. This helps keep Carrey's performance more human and grounded as he separates from his family, for fear of doing something "he might regret"; as madness creeps in. Madsen provides solid support as the wife, who only wants the best for her decent husband; with Danny Huston also credible as a professor friend who may or may not have alterior motives.
Stylized visualizations of the book's various passages, as imagined by Walter as he reads along, provide graphic paralyzing fear. These recreations feel heated and vortexed; as you travel the spiral downward with Walter., and amidst the horrors awaiting the shadows behind the truths., of "The Number 23".
A MUST SEE !!!! Cannot Disappoint !!!! Standing Ovations to Jim Carrey

I love Jim Carey as a dramatic actor. I feel his performance was strong and powerful in this movie. My problem, however, was the script. The young man who played his son was very good as well. And this could have been a very dramatic and powerful drama, but it was choppy and unbelievable. It was a great idea for the movie and the dramatic conclusion could have been more sore had they done it differently.