The 13th floor

Year of release : 1999

 

Run time : 1h40min

 

Genre : Sci-Fi / Thriller / Neo-Noir

 

Cast : Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Vincent D'Onofrio, Armin Mueller Stahl

 

 

The movie is based on the 1964 book “Simulacron 3” by Daniel F.Galouye , and the 1973 German tv mini series “World on a wire”.

In 1937, Hannon Fuller writes a letter for Douglas Hall, and leaves it at the bar, to the bartender, Ashton, who’s also pimping the girls working there as dancers and servants. Ashton opens the letter the moment he gets it.

 

Fuller goes home, goes to sleep, and wakes up in 1999, in his multi-dollar computer enterprise’s offices, connected to the virtual reality program with fully formed self learning cyber beings who exist on their own in this reality he created with Douglas Hall. These “units” populate the virtual reality, and from time to time ,Fuller transfers his consciousness into his counterpart from the program, Grierson.

He goes to another bar, and makes a phone call to Douglas. He hangs up as someone he knows interrupts him. Going outside, to talk to him, the person stabs him.

Douglas wakes up in the morning and notices blood on the sink, finding a shirt stained with what seems to be blood.

Douglas is called to the police station to identify Fuller’s body.

Back to his office, talking to the detective, the both of them meet Fuller’s daughter of who’s existence nobody knew of.

The moment he sees her, Douglas feels they’ve met before, as he finds her very familiar.

Talking to her later, he finds out Fuller wanted to shut down the company.

Talking to a lawyer, his “daughter” finds out her father changed his will in favour of the employees, and Douglas Hall is the owner of the company now.

The detective tells Douglas that he thinks he k1lled him, as he gets everything in his will.

Douglas wants to know what was Fuller up to, so he transfers his consciousness into the program’s counterpart as he listens to a voice message in which he tells him he left him a message in the system.

He finds what he’s looking for the second time he goes in, as he goes to talk to Fuller’s “unit” Grierson, who admits he has vivid dreams he comes out of smelling like the things he was doing in the dream, and they go together to the club Fuller was going to.

He ends up talking to Ashton who tells him the letter says the world is a sham. Douglas says it makes no sense why he would leave such a message for him in the system, unless it’s about his world!

At the same time, Douglas is being blackmailed by the bartender of the bar in their reality, as he says he saw him k1lling Fuller.

Since Douglas is not being cooperative, the man goes to the police, and they take him in.

Fuller’s daughter, Jane, gets him out, offering him an alibi.

Seeing Jane working as a clerk at a store as Natasha Molinaro who has no idea who he is, Douglas starts to worry and wonder if he really k1lled his mentor as he has these blackouts ,and when he's coming out of them, he doesn't remember a thing.

Also, he decides to go to the place he’d never go to, to test the boundaries of his reality.

 

This is one of my favorite movies, I have it on original videotape. I loved it, I love everything about it, the acting, the visual effects, the soundtrack, the set design, the places where they filmed (Douglas’ home is the same house from the movie Blade Runner, the Ennis House).

The actors, some of them, have to play 2 or three different characters. I mean, they are supposed to be the same person, but from different realities, so they have a different personality and appearance.

One thing that I noticed now, is that when they get into the simulation they don’t use anything (they don’t take anything, and aren’t connected to anything, so how does the connection work?!)

SPOILERS And also, how does Douglas get the deja-vu of Jane since he’s never met her (his user did.It works both ways?)? Because earlier we’re told the deja-vu is because Fuller used Grierson’s body, that’s why Grierson has the deja-vu and remembers things slowly when thinking about it.

The movie received low reviews from critics (with a 29 % on Rotten Tomatoes and 36 on Metacritic) but a higher score from the audience (64% from Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.2 on Metacritic).

Cinema Score audiences graded it a D+!

The movie grossed only 18.5 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 16 million dollars.

The movie was nominated for Best Science Fiction Movie but lost the award to The Matrix, a movie which is about the same thing!

Vincent D’Onofrio played in another movie like this, The Cell, released the following year,2000.

 

Rating : The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of !