13/13/13 ("lousy Smarch weather")

      We're going to call my missing February an “Olympic Break” (even though I only watched a total of like four hockey games and enough of the closing ceremony to see a giant crying bear and that was it for my Olympic experience) rather than just say I got lazy and skipped over it. Also, even though it's March and I should probably do something St. Patrick's Day related like Leprechaun (or one of its sequels) or move into reviewing terrible movies people have heard of (like The Core) or something like I'm thinking about doing, all of you can shut up because we're doing “13/13/13” this time. Why? Because there's a Simpsons quote about something like that (Marge: “It all started on the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteenth month. We were there to discuss the faulty calendars the school had purchased. Homer: “Lousy Smarch weather. Do not touch Willy. Good advice!”) and I haven't stopped giggling about the coincidence since I found out this movie was a thing in January and the description of it makes it sound like something even present day Simpsons writers gave up on for being too dumb. Namely: “For millennia, calendars have added an extra day every four years. In doing so, they violated the ancient Mayan calendar. Now we are in the 13th month of the 13th year of the new millennium, and the few who survive will battle a world of demons.” Lousy Smarch demons invading our world somehow.
      We start with a guy turning into his driveway and walking into his house from the car. This is only notable since, for some reason, as the camera is tracking along beside the car as it slowly rolls up the driveway. It cuts... to the exact same shot of the car slowing rolling up the driveway from the exact same angle. There's a little break that's hard to notice and I probably wouldn't have if I'd been drinking more already, but I kinda want to know why that happened. Did somebody working the camera trip over a tree branch or something and they figured rather than using a whole new take, they'd just start it over from roughly the same spot?
      Enough of that, though, back to the movie. The guy walks through the house and finds a little girl wearing a Leatherface mask. Except I don't think it's a mask as she's standing beside the bed while a different girl sits playing with dolls and a bunch of “blood” all over her face so I think it's supposed to be her skin that's been cut off and used to make the mask the first girl is wearing. The second girl wants the dad to “come play doll house” with them, and then the first girl jumps at him and we cut to... I think it's the same guy (I didn't get much of a look at him in the car) waking up in a tent while three other dudes sit around a campfire in lawn chairs drinking beers and laughing like idiots. So a pretty good representation of camping, I guess. He gets out of the tent and they start to pressure him into drinking even though it's morning while one of the other dudes is telling a story that turns out to be bullshit. I'm more and more impressed with how the people behind this movie were able to do such a good job capturing the reality of dudes going camping.
      The first guy's looking at his watch (it says “13:13” for the the time! ...although they didn't use the seconds to make it 13:13:13 because subtlety I guess) and he asks who was messing with his watch 'cause he doesn't use military time. Nobody was messing with it, of course, so he just tries to set it back. It doesn't seem to go and now we get 13:13:13 on the watch. That's probably a well developed set-up by this movie's standards.
      They pack up and we find out the first guy's name is “Jack” and that he and at least one of the other guys used to be cops. His other buddy calls him “Killer” so I'm guessing Jack shot somebody while on the force. Oh, and it turns out that first part was just a nightmare. These guys are old friends and Jack is in the middle of a divorce so they're all going on a camping trip to get his mind off it or something. And the car radio clock says 13:13 now, too. Before leaving (although if they haven't left yet, why were they out in the woods in tents around a campfire already?) they stop at Jack's old house to see his kids and soon-to-be-ex wife. It's probably worth noting at this point that there doesn't seem like a lot of reason these guys should be friends. Jack's pretty soft spoken and “nice” or whatever so far, his other cop buddy has been acting like a douche bag, the fat guy has been trying to act like a Douche Cop but comes off as a complete fucking idiot (I'm going to call him “Fat Idiot” until I find out his name... and probably after that, too), and the fourth guy hadn't said much but after Jack mentioned making a stop to see his kids (the oldest daughter is supposed to be 12... I'm guessing she has a birthday coming up) he starts talking and giving off this creepy pedophile vibe that only gets worse when they get to the house and she's playing outside. Douche Cop and Fat Idiot just say hi to her and follow Jack inside after he talked to his daughter, but Probably Pedo says hi and then kinda lingers around for a couple seconds looking at her all creepily before going inside with the rest of them. The daughter then crushes and eats a spider she had in her hand.
      Jack then walks into the kitchen and starts raiding the fridge for beer for his friends. The wife (Marcy) is washing her hands in the kitchen sink because something “won't come off. It just won't come off.” I'm guessing maybe they were actually coming back from the trip rather than just about to go? I might have misheard what they were saying in the car, but now Jack is inviting the rest of the guys (Douche Cop is named Quinton, Fat Idiot is named Joe, and Probably Pedo still doesn't have a name yet) out to dinner since he's taking his daughter Kendra out. It's at this point we see that Marcy has been trying to wash off blood or something as she's ripped open the inside of her left forearm so looks like dinner is canceled and we get a trip to the Poorly Acted Hospital instead.
      Everyone, from other patients, to relatives, to orderlies, to the doctors have their acting turned up to -11 and are complaining about being busy and generally being snappy with everyone. Marcy is, of course, in room 13. As Jack is going back to see her he passes a doctor who says “that's like the thirteenth guy I've lost today” then snaps at him.
      Back at the house, Probably Pedo is looking out the window and creepily watching Kendra play in the driveway while Quinton and Joe sit on the couch drinking beer. Quinton starts “acting” by snapping about wanting a beer. Probably Pedo now goes out to talk to Kendra and yeah, he's definitely a pedophile that Jack's apparently warned his kids about already. This raises the question of why a former cop would even be friends with a pedophile let alone bring him around to his ex-wife's house where his two daughters live and then especially raises the question of why he'd leave the daughters there with the pedophile when he went with his wife to the hospital. Turns out the guy's name is Trevor but that doesn't matter as Kendra ends up violently beating the shit out of him and smashing the back of his head against the driveway while Quinton and Joe sit inside on the couch debating who's getting up to get the next beer. There are many odd things and questionable choices going on so far but no demons and nothing really “bad movie” bad except the acting.
      When Joe and Quinton finally go outside (for no real reason it seems) they find Kendra sitting on Trevor's dead body and then she attacks them and Quinton naturally figures the best response is to attempt to run her over. I know I've mentioned the bad acting a couple times already, but the way the guy playing Quinton goes after it just reminds me of Nicholas Cage for some reason. Just over the edge over the top crazy at all times. Also, other people are starting to randomly attack people as one guy is crawling along the sidewalk and gets his eyes gouged out by some random chick. Quinton Cage (I'm just going to assume that's his last name) knows how to handle this! Full reverse! Ram over top of two people and instantly kill them! Claim it's worth “ten points” and you're “going for a high score” while your dim-witted buddy who can't even hold down a 12 year old girl so you can run her over nods along! Exclamation points after everything because you're intense! Stand around looking at each other not saying anything for way too long! Go back in the house as if nothing's wrong!
      Back to the hospital where Marcy is waking up and it looks like the doctors could only be bothered to bandage up a third of her arm as most of it is still uncovered and all raw from her scratching at it. They really take the whole “your medicare only covers THIS MUCH” thing seriously in the States, huh? Jack explains that the doctors don't know what happened with her but think she may have had a stroke or something which kinda makes me think he might have been talking to a janitor rather than a doctor. The one doctor he was talking to before did throw his doctor's jacket at Jack so maybe he threw it at some other random guy who actually kept it. Jack decides to call Quinton to check up on things at home and Quinton answers and is able to put Kendra on the phone to talk to Jack? This seems odd considering as well as all the murdering people that was going on in the last scene, Kendra also ran off so she shouldn't be home at all. Also, Jack keeps talking like there's only one girl so maybe there isn't another daughter and there absolutely being another daughter in the nightmare scene should just be forgotten. Anyway, Marcy decides now is the time to take the IV drip out of her and attack Jack by jumping on his back while he's on the phone. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm betting Jack's got a good shot at retaining custody of the kid(s) when all this is said and done. Funniest scene in the movie so far: after getting Marcy off his back and restraining her, she ends up biting Jack's arm and he pushes her away causing her to fall over onto the hospital bed which causes him to suddenly forget everything that's happening and start apologizing (“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push you that hard”). Unless there was some previous history of domestic abuse that I'm not aware of, that just seems like the most hilariously wrong reaction to a situation since the guy at the start of Bloody Mary stabbed his wife to death because she was naked in bed with another hot girl. And now, Marcy jumps out the third floor window and kills herself for no reason. Suddenly that little “scuffle” is going to lead to some major questions for Jack.
      Quinton and Joe are inside the house again (noticeably absent: Kendra who was just on the phone when Jack called Quinton) and are sitting on the couch about to start drinking beer again. Quinton uses a knife to open his beer can, then decides it'd be funnier to stab Joe in the stomach with it. Joe, after initially crying for a couple seconds, agrees that it's more funny than sad (the exact opposite response people watching this have to this movie) and starts to laugh along with him and they decide to start finger painting the walls with Joe's blood because drinking and as-yet-unmentioned Mayan calendar demons turn you into a violent, artistically-inclined four yet old (also known as “a four year old”).
      The people at the hospital seem to have had the same reaction as Jack leaves the room to find the rest of the hospital looking like the aftermath coma patients in other movies wake up in to discover their in a zombie/Resident Evil movie. This is impressive because in those cases it's taken months or at least 28 days for everything to fall apart like that, but in this case Mayan super-efficiency has made it happen in a matter of minutes. Jack is pulled into a different room which was bound to happen since there's still almost an hour in the movie and all, but the fact that she just randomly opened the door and pulled him in at the exact time he was standing in front of it with his back turned even though there isn't a window in the door for her to see that he was looking away (or, better yet, to see that he was “normal”) makes for some suspiciously good timing. Jack wants to go back and save Kendra, but the girl says Kendra's “as good as dead” out there. This lady seriously underestimates the daughter of a former cop. If she can take on one pedophile who had already started to slap her in the face, I think she's got a good shot at taking on the rest of this crazy, messed-up world. The woman ends up telling Jack her theory that people born on leap years aren't effected because both her and Jack were born on leap years and they're the only two who haven't gone crazy. I'd like to point out that this sort of goes entirely against what the plot says of the movie since, by that logic, February 29^th is just another day without any special meaning to it. I'm not sure anyone involved bothered to read over this a second time (or even a first, most likely), though, so we'll chalk that up as another “but weren't there two daughters?” moments.
      Joe and Quinton now have Jack's guns and are loading them up to go “hunt some dinner”. Quinton also flat out tells Joe to “stop laughing like an idiot” which I find funny 'cause Quinton's spent the whole movie laughing like that, and Joe's spent the whole movie being an idiot.
      Candace, the girl who can see through hospital doors, is explaining that “it seems to effect people differently. Some go in and out of craziness, some seem to have multiple personalities or PTSD, but one thing they have in common is they're all incredibly violent towards one another. Over this we get shots of various people covered in blood and wandering through the hospital hallways but also a CGI shot of a glowing blue skeleton holding it's head as it's bright pink brain radiates waves of, I assume, craziness because how else are you going to illustrate that concept? Also, there's “news footage” from riots in Berlin in order to show it's everywhere. I guess if it's happening in L.A. and Germany, then it's gotta be everywhere, right? Two places is enough evidence to conclude that it's a worldwide thing. Jack and Candace now decide it's time to “if I told you, you'd think I was crazy” duel each other. Jack leads off with “everywhere I go today I keep running into 13/13/13” after seeing three 13s on the thermostat (he also calls seeing “13 13 13” on the thermostat “using Celsius” as in “we don't even use Celsius in America” because having the number thirteen on a temperature display three times is clearly Celsius and that's part of the metric system and the metric system is the tool of the devil!). Candace counters with “That's what I've been trying to tell you! Today is 13/13/13!” and goes on with how leap years were invented by adding a day at the end of February and how after 120 years it was “supposed to add up to a whole other month” and how “mathematically speaking” so “today is 13/13/13” (her words, by the way. All stupid, plot-driving, craziness of it). I'm not going to bother with the math or to look up the history of leap years, but I can already say that's fucking duuuuuuummmmmmmb. Also, in this theory, they aren't suicidal so Jack figures that's the point that proves her wrong since Marcy jumped out a window by herself. In case you're keeping score at home: there's still been no mentions of the Mayans.
      It's decided that Jack and Candace are going to fight their way out through the hospital to go find Kendra. Candace says that's a crazy idea 'cause “they can't even see through the door” which seems odd since that's exactly how she met him in the first place. Loss of super powers aside, they arm themselves with scalpels that are just lying around, and open the door. At first it seems clear bet then some guy comes in and there's a struggle before Jack ends up killing him by squishing his head with the door. Of note from this (aside from a relatively little-used horror movie weapon in “door”) is that the new guy somehow knew about and mentioned Jack's daughter while they were wrestling. Damn crazy people and their super powers of reading minds.
      At the house, Joe and Quinton are busy being crazy and apparently forgetting that it was Quinton that stabbed Joe because they just argue about that for a while before going back to shooting the “crazy people outside”. And their finger painting masterpiece was just a couple (I'm guessing there's really three and I've only seen two) 13s on the walls. They decide to board up the windows using a two by four that was just lying around somewhere in the house. Probably a sound tactic, except that they forget the nails and Joe ends up just trying to hammer the board into the wall using the butt of the gun. I'm not sure if these guys are supposed to be the comic relief or what but it's not working.
      Arming themselves with a fire ax and the knife a crazy lady who'd already made one face mask and was trying for a second dropped, Jack and Candace go through the hospital on foot (so they don't get out of the elevator on the ground floor only to be surrounded) looking for the keys out of dead doctor's pockets so they can use on of their cars to escape to Jack's house since they'd both arrived via ambulance. That's actually pretty smart thinking, even if it's just convenient-to-plot so they can get chased down the stairway by a group of crazies.
      Before going on, though, a quick note about that. Why the fuck was that stairway group working in a pack? If all these people have gone crazy and are turning super-violent against each other, wouldn't this bunch (not to mention Quinton and Joe) have ripped each other apart before going after other people? Me and a friend had come up with a theory how regular zombies (think Walking Dead and Romero's Dawn Of The Dead and that style) don't kill each other off 'cause they only attack live prey so, when they see another zombie walking around, they're drawn to it thinking it's possible food but end up finding out it's not alive so they start wandering off together and that's how packs of them form, but in this case that doesn't apply 'cause these aren't “zombies” like that, they're just going crazy and killing each other. What's the logic behind them working together? Shoddy film making, no doubt. Anyway, Jack sprays the first stairway crazy in line with mace that he picked up... somewhere, and he and Candace escape because that first guy fell down and the ones behind him decided to stop running after that. I should really be drinking more as we're pretty much two thirds through the movie and I'm not feeling any buzz yet and it's starting to annoy me that I've been watching this sober for so long.
      On the ground floor, Jack and Candace take some of the “we should REALLY be quiet right now” time while they're searching dead bodies for car keys in a hospital full of murderous psychos to start loudly talking to each other. Jack mentions that he used to be a cop but left the force four months ago and Candace asks about it. Rather than answer Jack says “don't you think it'd be better if we didn't know that much about each other? You know, just in case...” No, Jack, no we do not think that as there is no “just in case” that I can think of you might be alluding to that could be harmed by knowing something about the person you're trying to escape Monster Hospital with (can't call it “Zombie Hospital” since they're not zombies and can't call it Crazy Hospital 'cause those are called “Mental Institutions” now). Confronted by this logic, Jack admits that he was kicked off due to excessive force and goes into great detail telling the story about how he beat a guy to death who was attempting to rape a 17 year old girl. This also somehow, led to Marcy leaving him (kicked off the force? Maybe; wife leaving you because you killed a rapist attacking a teenage girl? Questionable) but the main thing to take away from this scene is that they're in a hospital surrounded by people who want to butcher them and they take the time to stop what they're doing (looking for keys so they can drive out of there and get to Jack's little girl) to talk to each other in non-whispered voices from ten feet away for a few minutes. As you might guess, this attracts the attention of those people that are trying to butcher them so now they have to run again.
      They get into the parking garage and hid behind a couple cars while the group of three crazies stalk them. The leader of the bunch tries to talk Jack into coming out and fighting him face to face while one of the others keeps looking and finds Candace, dragging her back to where his friends are standing. The competition for which of the two sidekick crazies is dumber heats up as even though the one that found Candace failed to look directly across from her to where Jack was crouching beside a car (making no real effort to hide himself other than “don't poke your head up”), the other guy keeps standing beside the leader as the leader makes a speech about “making it a fair fight” while brandishing a knife. So yeah, the second sidekick gets killed. Oh, completely random: looking at the IMDB page of the movie and the lead crazy 'cause I thought he looked familiar (turns out I've never heard of him which I should've guessed considering how there was likely a total of zero dollars in the casting budget for this movie), it turns out he's Ian Roberts who was the first openly gay professional athlete in a team sport (rugby in Australia). So there's a trivia fact for you. After shouting some more, lead crazy walks ten feet with his remaining sidekick (they leave Candace on her own behind them so she can go pick up the fire ax she'd dropped), finds Jack, then starts stabbing the sidekick leaving Jack enough time to walk up and slit the leader's throat while he was busy stabbing his friend. What in all kinds of fuck? They were building this up like it was going to be some sort of major fight scene between Jack and this crazy guy, and it just turns into nothing and is over in less time than it took you to read about it. Did they leave this scene to be shot last and ended up spending all their money before they could do it so just had to cut what so far is looking like the Boss Fight (obviously a fight with Quinton and Joe is still coming up and then probably one where Jack has to kill his daughter) of the movie? Fucking tease.
      Despite a lack of nails (although a close up shows that they've found some... but still no hammers as Joe's still using the gun), Quinton and Joe have sealed up the windows of Jack's house during the night. A night that it totally wasn't in any of the scenes involving the hospital and totally isn't anymore when they should a shot of other crazies outside the house, but that's not important since the shot from outside shows those crazies all gathered around clearly un-boarded up windows. Was there literally no one watching for continuity on this movie? Besides that, Quinton is in the middle of giving a speech how Jack's house is “our home turf. Nobody's taking our home turf. Like fucking D-Day”. I'll let that sink in for a second. … Good enough? Okay, now for the slow students, I'll point out that D-day was the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied France in World War II. An invasion that the Allies won, thereby taking away the “home turf” of the Nazis. I'm betting this was intentional because God help us as a species if it wasn't. I'm secure in “fully intentional” on that line as Quinton goes on to say something about George Washington and other war-like symbolism. Also, there's some more footage from around the world including a soccer stadium, various cities with “foreign-looking” (re: not white) people in them, and also a shot of a dude waving a hockey stick around from outside of the back window of a car. That is now the single greatest “violence in the streets of a world gone mad” shot in the history of zombie/zombie-like movies. It might be Canadian-bias, but just hear me out: the “emergency broadcast network” is going on about martial law being declared in a voice over, you have shots of riots and things burning from places “all over the world” and then... guy swatting a hockey stick around from the backseat of a family car. There isn't even any death or destruction going on in that shot. Just the car driving on the road and a dude with a hockey stick out the back window. I think they just found that on YouTube or something and realized they'd been given a gift to glorious NOT to use as stock disaster footage. I'm going to have to watch that again. It kills me.
     On second viewing: it definitely IS just footage they found on YouTube (or somewhere like it) because there ISN'T any destruction going on in the streets, but there are people walking and one of them is wearing a Montreal Canadiens jersey so that's gotta be just random footage somebody took outside the rink before an NHL game (it couldn't have been from after a playoff game, 'cause if it was Montreal would have lost and there really would've been cars overturned and on fire for them to film! Go Leafs). Even given that everything else in this montage is just random stock footage of riots from around the world, that still seems like the weirdest thing to put in there. Anyway, back to the movie.
      Jack and Candace get to Jack's house and there's crazy things going on outside and people attacking each other all over the lawn and driveway. That's going to effect the re-sale value considerably towards the negative side. Gaining access to the backyard after opening an unlocked gate that no one else bothered with, Jack finds the spare key and he and Candace head inside. Joe's dying inside and Quinton's trying to talk him through it by saying “he's been hurt much worse than this!” like back when they were in the Korean War together! ...fighting for North Korea. This makes the Nazi thing from earlier more obviously on purpose (although it raises a question about why he was talking about Washington wanting them to fight for their homes if he's channeling the “bad guys” in American wars), and also leads to the best stand alone line of the movie where Joe says “...I'm Asian?” and Quinton responds “we're ALL a little bit Asian!” Nick Cage would be proud. Jack tries to talk some sense into the both of them by reminding them that they're not Asian and haven't been in any war, but Quinton isn't having any of it and continues on pretending they're in a war zone while telling Jack that Kendra ran off after “smashing poor Private Trevor's head in”. Jack takes Quinton's gun, in response Quinton takes Joe's gun. They point them at each other but decide to point it at the outsides as the crazies outside pick this moment to break in. They end up both out of bullets but get the door closed and blocked off anyway (even with Dawn Of The Dead remake style sound effects from the “I swear to Go they're not zombies” zombies). Quinton kills Joe and... what? The two of them are brothers? The fuck? They look nothing alike and no one's mentioned it before (although I guess that clears up why Jack was hanging out with the other three: Quinton was his partner as a cop, Joe is Quinton's brother, and Pedo Trevor was, likely, Joe's friend rather than a friend of the two cops). Whatever, at this point Kendra walks in through the back door (despite Jack saying he locked it behind himself) and Quinton uses the gun he said was out of bullets to shoot her in the head because fuck logic at this point.
      Guess there was only the one extra bullet left since when Quinton turn the gun on Jack it just clicks empty for him, but he still manages to over power Jack, take the knife, and stab him with it while quoting Deliverance (again: Crazy Quinton Cage has to be the best written least self-aware character in B-movie history since the original context of “squeal like a pig, boy!” involves a whole different type of stabbing). Candace tries to attack Quinton with a fire ax but is somehow unable to do so effectively even when he's busy on top of Jack so she gets over powered and Quinton throws her to the ground and starts punching her in the face and tearing her clothes. This is obviously meant to be a parallel to the story Jack told about the rapist he killed to get kicked off the police force because exactly that happens again and Jack punches Quinton to death.
      Jack wants to stay and “die with his family” but Candace insists on trying to help him limp along (he was stabbed in the gut so the limp seems out of place). He tells her to grab the ax and knife but she has to let him go to do it... causing him to fall over. That was actually pretty damn funny, I'll give it that. They do end up walking out and getting from the backyard out to the car again while the crazies stay occupied with the house for no reason. Then they drive off. And we find it's night again and the streets are full of cars being driven by people because fuck logic. There's a bunch of wrap up dialogue and Jack ends up dying from his wounds. Candace is left crying over a guy she just met earlier that day (despite there being a whole other night in between, this is all supposed to have been one day), and then the credits roll.
      So to recap: no Mayans or any mention thereof. Two daughters in a nightmare suddenly become one daughter in real life and it's never mentioned again. Leap years were added every four years “just because” and February 29^th which, in this “just because” logic shouldn't have any special meaning at all, should flat out just not exist which is why people born then are fine. What are supposed to be major plot points based on their build up (the parking garage fight, finding Kendra) are in fact nothing. Actually writing an ending is hard, better to just leave it with the hero dying and the girl crying. Oh, and people who look nothing alike, sound totally different, and are never mentioned as being related before can be revealed to be brothers in the end of the movie because fuck all of your continuity and story telling conventions.
      To close out, I'd like to point out that, from what Netflix has shown me, this is something of a series. There was an 11/11/11 (two, actually; although one looked like it was actually made by a studio with money), a 12/12/12, and now this. If/when 14/14/14 shows up... well... you know where to find this blog.