13/13/13 – 1 out of 5
So I laughed at 11/11/11 and cringed at 12/12/12 and with 13/13/13 I found myself sighing. While these films aren’t technically a franchise since none of them have really anything to do with each other and each has their own stories, they are all connected in the fact they were produced by The Asylum and all revolve around the date. At this point you are probably asking yourself how this one can be linked to a date since there isn’t a 13thmonth (Smarch?). Well, The Asylum couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make another dumb film and to have their 12/12/12 followed by a trifecta of unlucky numbers now, could they?
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| Remember when I posted this on my review for 11/11/11 and said it would come into play in a future review? Well, 13/13/13 reuses this footage despite the fact that the two films are not connected. |
After Jack (Trae Ireland) returns from a camping trip with his odd collection of friends, he discovers his ex-wife has harmed herself badly and he rushes her to the hospital. Once there, he finds that all the doctors and patients are acting erratically and aggressively. In the madness, he meets Candace (Erin Coker), and she doesn’t appear to be suffering from the same kind of insanity. She informs him that the only people free from this “infection” are those who were born on a leap year and that because mankind has been adding this day it has violated the Mayan Calendar and has made this day the 13th day of the 13thmonth of the new millennium. Now Jack and Candace must try and survive in this new world overrun by crazy and violent people.
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| Good luck finding more Leap Year babies in order to recreate society. |
I say this in every review of a film from The Asylum but the production on this movie is not good. Yes, I know the company is apathetic towards filmmaking and their goal is not to make something watchable but rather to just create for the sake of creating but it bears noting with every one of their films that they are made terribly. Sometimes this terrible filmmaking results in accidental gold that is fun to watch because it is either so damn ridiculous that it is a fun ride (like Zoombies) or because it is just fun to riff on (like almost ALL of their films) but sometimes they are just so bad that it is a test of one’s willpower to sit through them. That is what 13/13/13 delivered: A product that is less than a movie and more of a test of one’s mental strength and patience.
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| These are Jack's friends. The one in the back is a pedophile and Jack knows it (the story covers that), one is the lead singer to Smash Mouth it seems and the third is just an unlikable asshole who spends most of the movie ordering people to get him a beer. |
Like all films from The Asylum, this movie’s concept is stolen from a more popular movie. In this case, the film they are ripping off is The Crazies. Also, like every production from The Asylum, they don’t do a very good job in ripping the film off and by that I mean they took a movie that’s already kinda/sorta good (both the original and the remake) and somehow make it insanely worse through bad editing, weak camera work, a score that sounds like it was downloaded from a royalty-free website and plot that can’t figure out its pacing and where story and character developments should take place. For example, the writers think when Jack and Candace are out in the open, where all the infected crazy people are roaming in broad daylight, is the best time to explore Jack’s tragic backstory and how it has affected himself and his relationships. A more skilled writer would have waited until the characters are put in a scenario where they are relatively and momentarily safe but just throwing the spaghetti at the wall and not caring if it sticks is kinda the way of the world for The Asylum. Ultimately though, these elements can be laughed at and make an otherwise terrible movie somewhat watchable but what really kills this film and makes it truly one of The Asylum’s worse (but not nearly as bad as 12/12/12) is the acting.
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| "We are out in the open and exposed. This is the best time to talk about my tragic past. The crazy people will respect my character development and will patiently wait to attack." |
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| Oh look, his eyes are wide. That means he's crazy! |
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| Hey look, they are totes crazy! |
When they are not being violent (which the cast thinks means dropping as many F-bombs as humanly possible—over usage of this particular swear is often a sure sign of bad improvisation on sets) they are laughing to convey being insane. It is horribly monotonous and very grating to see as it is done over and over again. Laughing wildly isn’t being crazy and it just comes off repetitive. The cast could have at least watched either the original or the remake of The Crazies so they could have varied their performances. However, this is what the production went for and it is an ordeal to sit through.
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| I have no problem with swearing (I swear in this blog) but sometimes an over-reliance on the word "Fuck" shows really bad writing and a desperate attempt at trying to sound like an adult. |
13/13/13 is your typical movie from The Asylum. It lacks originality and talent, there’s no creativity to it and the technical side of things are a mess. Usually I watch these films to laugh at and riff on but this one was more cringe-inducing with its horrible performances that it made creating jokes at its expense very challenging. At least when The Asylum does their over-the-top shark and monster films you can laugh at their horrendous special effects and can giggle at the fact that whenever madness is going down you can always see things going about normally in the background because the company’s reach is very limited (and you can see that in this one too at points) but this film was just boring and so bad that it was very hard to finish.
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