The Thirteenth Floor

The Thirteenth Floor
by Josef Rusnak

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Movie Reviews of The Thirteenth Floor

Movie Review: Is there a movie more underrated than this one???
Summary: 5 Stars

TTF has a very good storyline. Many people say it is confusing; that means that they haven't understood it fully (is it really so hard to understand the idea of a simulation inside a simulation?). At no point in the movie I had the what-the-hell-is-going-on feeling. On the contrary: the story kept me more and more interested as it unfolded. I had goosebumps while watching Douglas realizing the terrifying truth in the supermarket. The story got even more involved at the end. I don't agree with those saying that the ending was bad, either. Actually, it was pretty nice to see the film end like that. The love story was a great enrichment of the story.

I like film-noir style. Unfortunately, it is one of the most difficult styles to implement into filmmaking so that audiences don't fall asleep while watching. No matter what everyone else says, I think that TTF has an excellent film-noir atmosphere. I knew this from the first moments when I saw Fuller writing the letter, having a drink, looking at his watch..., all made the film-noir way. Inherently, film-noir movies are somewhat slow and that is probably the main reason why people thought of it as a boring film.

The idea of creating new worlds is of course very thought-provoking. The same idea was explored in The Matrix, but from a very different perspective. First, we never see the actual computer hardware that holds the system (I found that a little annoying). Second, the minds of the people inside the system belonged to people in the real world; that is, people in the real world were dreaming inside the matrix. In TTF, the virtual people are created from scratch (sure, they are more or less copies of the people who made them but they live separate lives). That whole thing about memory loss and changing identities is similar to Dark City, but in Dark City both the aliens and people lived in the same world, whereas in TTF they live in separate dimensions.

The 13th Floor is a very involved movie. People who liked The Matrix will not necessarily like this one. I admit it could have been better: cinematography is pretty standard, characters should probably have been a little more worked on and the script made more cohesive. Acting by the lead characters, music, sound and visual effects are pretty good, however. Having said that, I get to the last and most troubling topic: why was this film such a disaster at the box office, huh? I guess most people had still video clips of Reeves and Moss jumping on the walls and slaughtering guards (no offense to The Matrix) replaying in their heads, so they really didn't have a desire to see something else. My point is, TTF release date was unfortunate (and I don't agree that it tried to capitalize on the success on The Matrix). It was poorly promoted, too, but given that most of the people associated with making of it were rookies, that is not surprising. But I am still puzzled as to why only 700 people voted for this movie. Man, there are really so few people who have seen it? I hope that, with its release on VHS and DVD, more people will see it and rate it, so its rating will be more representative of the film's qualities. And if you are discouraged by some of the very negative reviews it got, give it a try. TTF appears to be a love-or-hate thing and with movies like that, you cannot rely on what other people are saying. If you let yourself into the film's atmosphere, you might just enjoy it as much as I did.

Summary of The Thirteenth Floor