13/13/13

You can see from the very first minutes that the production values of this film are very bad, as the movie goes on, (with the exception of Erin Coker) we see that none of the actors have an ounce of talent for a long feature film. But curiosity got the best out of me, since at the beginning gave me a little jump, I decided to give it a chance, thinking "as soon as I get bored I will stop watching it".

I remember "The happening" from M. Night Shyamalan, one of the biggest missed opportunities for weird circumstances, and 13-13-13, with all the bad acting, low budget, and else, and being a poor man's film, was being better than Shyamalan's failed attempts to recover and prove himself as a good writer and director. Yes, the lines and situations are absurd, but as a viewer you feel compelled to keep on watching, why? You may ask; well, I have watched some many movies, that for me is so difficult to find something interesting and driven, and tired of the "regular" zombies, criminals, and scripts full of dirty jokes, I look for something that can keep me from snoozing off. But… oh, disappointed again! One of the major flaws is the overacting from Trae Ireland, he plays the "state the obvious", over-thinking, bossy, overprotective "hero", too slow to realize the gravity of the situation, wasting time when he should be running for her daughter's safety and definitely I also blame this on the terrible direction. Phrases like "nice catch" and other witty lines made me smile in mockery, really I wished that he have been killed on the hospital's hallway so "Candace" gets to deal with the whole situation, this way the unnecessary characters of Quentin and Joe could have been eliminated from the script. I cannot recommend in any way this zombie-crazies or whatever lunatic concept they tried, and one thing is for sure I will never watch another film where Jody Barton (Quentin) is involved with.

That 13/13/13 had a decent enough premise was the main reason for seeing it in the first place. With the right execution the movie may not have been too bad, though seeing as this is The Asylum we're talking about that was going to be unlikely. And sadly 13/13/13 joins the endless list of movies that have "good premise but bad execution", and is yet another movie that shows why Asylum movies are hated on so much. The production values throughout are really cheap, the whole movie is very dully lit, the editing is abrupt-looking and sloppy and the photography never rises above amateurish TV quality. The special effects and the like are at best risible, and the make-up is fancy-dress sort of fashion. The script and story are also major debits, as well as the direction and acting. The script is very, very weak, it is very stilted and has no subtlety of any kind. It is also littered to the brim with cussing, some of it gives it some flavour but it's overused and quickly gets tiresome, reading often of being there for the sake of it. The story is to sum it up in two words dull and predictable with a touch of annoying over-silliness too, if you're looking for any thrills, tension or fun look for another movie because they're not anywhere in 13/13/13. The direction shows no sense of character or style, the external review said along the likes of it being too reliant on the acting than on the dialogue and that sums it up perfectly. Unfortunately, apart from Erin Coker who is reasonable, the acting is pretty terrible, especially from Trae Ireland who overacts and is also a bore. With Tiffany Martinez, there is shades of talent that are not used well here, where all she's talented at or is made to do is cuss with conviction. This she does but the performance is never anything more than that. Jody Barton and J. Scott suffer from not just being annoying but that their characters, none of which in 13/13/13 are you able to root for, serve no real point. The music is generic and at times over-bearing and the sound effects and quality are bizarre and lowly-mixed. Overall, initially 13/13/13 may not have been so bad judging from the premise but from the way it was executed on screen it ended up being a real struggle to sit through. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Let me start by saying that James Cullen Bressack's film 13/13/13, released by The Asylum, has, at its core, a GREAT idea. At a time when the Horror and Sci-fi genres seem plagued by remakes, copy cats and irony filled shark attack films, even from so-called first time or indie talent, 13/13/13 has this great horror sci-fi concept.

Basically it's all something to do with leap years violating the ancient Mayan calendar and all those extra days in February, over time have created an extra month and on the date of 13/13/13 everyone who wasn't born on a February 29th goes completely nuts.

It's a wonderful, end of the world scenario that allows for lots of death, destruction, mayhem and the symbolism of the "unlucky number" 13. More importantly, I hadn't really heard of much like that before and it's always nice to hear a fresh idea. Yes, OK, so behind the idea is the whole Mayan calendar hoopla that went around last year claiming that, in 2012, the world was going to end and, I'm sure that, The Asylum liked it for that reason, as they're always making B-Movie versions of big budget disaster films (or Mockbusters as I believe the affectionate term is for them) but this has a decent spin on that and actually attempts something novel with it. The idea that leap years added up would form this weird 13 month is just the kind of bonkers, surreal hokum I am drawn to. There was a bit of George A Romero's The Crazies mixed in there as well but it's, at least, a different Romero source to draw from than the interminable bad zombie films we've had to wade through lately.

The things that I enjoyed in this film were the slow build up to people going crazy, some good and, on some occasions, even darkly comic deaths, a nice, atmospheric, gory and weird hospital sequence and attempts to establish different types of craziness for different groups of people. There was a really strong bedrock here for a pretty decent end-of-the-world horror film and what the filmmakers were able to do with, what was, obviously, a limited budget was, also, very impressive.

What was a slight disappointment with the movie, for me, was the fact that, I didn't feel, the concept went anywhere or was explored as much as I would've liked. For example, it needed a crazy old professor, or someone, who knew about the old world and spouted Donald Pleasance-like doom filled one-liners. The film, definitely, could've done with some sort of further explanation of the situation or some place to go. Maybe a glimmer of hope to reverse the situation using a mystical rock, Mayan gold amulet or something, or, maybe the rising of old beings to establish their order again on earth. As it was, while it was atmospheric, gory as all hell and nicely shot, the hospital sequence went on entirely too long and once our two, Feb 29th born, protagonists finally escaped there was little time for anything but a muddled and, I felt, rushed finale back at the house.

The acting was a problem in the film. I watch a lot of amateur and low budget films so it doesn't bother me a lot but the acting was pretty stale, unfortunately, and not one character really shone in the film. A lot of that might have been the script too because, while the idea was there and the deaths, gore and action were all there, the dialogue was, in places, dreadful. I thought that more creative ways could've been used to convey the craziness other than just rage and repeated uses of the f-word said unconvincingly by actors struggling to act. Don't get me wrong, there were some creative bits of craziness, especially Quentin (Jody Barton) believing himself, suddenly, to be a Korean war general but overall the swearing and the anger felt forced in some of the performances. I liked the laughter and the random acts of violence but thought the opportunity to make that truly creepy was missed. Without a few strong, decent lines of dialogue and the odd interesting character, the film did, very slowly, become something of a slog but there was, genuinely, some nice potential here.

Trae Ireland and Erin Coker were solid enough, but neither of them had very interesting characters. Calico Cooper is Alice Cooper's daughter but sadly didn't get to do very much but what she did was fine though. Jody Barton got the showy role and was, at least, enthusiastic with it and, probably, the strongest performer of the lot. Bill Voorhees, with the name made for horror film acting, was sort of funny in the role of sidekick to Jody Barton despite it being an underwritten, obvious, slob-friend role.

While it, sadly, does go nowhere, there was lots to like in this B-Movie. One positive on the acting was that I didn't feel anybody was winking at me or playing any scenes in a lazy, half-arsed manner. I felt that everyone was trying their hardest and playing the scenes straight and true. This is important because it's become all too fashionable these days, even amongst high-profile stuff like Tarantino and Rodriguez's later work, to knowingly and lazily play every scene just for puerile, pathetic and ironic laughter and, for me, that just takes me right out of the film. While the acting isn't always strong or dynamic, I am glad to say 13/13/13 doesn't do this. The key to making a fun, enjoyable, weird, silly, wonderful, cult or B-Movie is to believe in what you're doing, no matter how ridiculous and, again, this film does succeed in that regard.

While not quite there completely I appreciated this film for it's attempt at a different, creative take on an apocalypse scenario. It was an enjoyable romp, some great scenes, some good enthusiasm and a decent idea at its core.

I went into watching this movie with some high hope thinking that this movie would be good after all the other garbage that we had to watch this year. But this movie was a complete let down. The cast I will leave alone cause I saw no one that I can relate to....plus the acting could have been better. The whole world coming to an end and we all turn up acting like crazies is like ...What is happening right now or these guys just rip headline news stories and try ( and rather poorly) to convince me (the viewer) that this what's going to happen? NOPE! Save your money and your download time for something better I give it 1 star.

I had a look at this movie because I was bored and was in need of a decent horror movie. I'm regretting I did not look at IMDb before I hired it. Let's say this is the most horrible display of acting I have ever seen. The plot seems really cool and it still is , but they completely ruined it with over the top acting and lines that could have been written by an 8 year old.

There is nothing to say about this movie then it deserves a -10 . I wonder how the actors in the movie feel about this, why did they not make the plan to just quit after coming to the conclusion this will and would never work.

Thank you for the two lost hours of my life.