Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is an animal control officer married to Agatha (Virginia Madsen); they have a son, Robin (Logan Lerman). The film opens with Walter narrating the events of his recent birthday. He received a call to catch a dog. Walter eventually corners the dog, and learns from his name tag that his name is Ned. The dog bites his arm and escapes again. Thanks to the delay caused by Ned, Walter is late meeting his wife and while she is waiting, she enters a bookstore where she looks through a book titled The Number 23 written by Topsy Kretts. When Walter arrives, Agatha announces that she is going to buy the book for him as a birthday present.

Walter starts reading the book, noticing odd similarities between himself and the main character, a detective who refers to himself as “Fingerling”. The character explains that he got the name from an obscure children’s book, one that Walter also enjoyed as a child. The book details Fingerling’s meeting with the “Suicide Blonde”, whose bizarre obsession with the number 23 drives her to murder her boyfriend and commit suicide. Walter begins to have dreams of murdering Agatha, which causes him to become extremely paranoid. After one such dream he drives off in the middle of the night. Walter winds up in the King Edward Hotel. Initially, he was issued room 27, but requests room 23. Walter spends the evening finishing the book only to discover that the book stops at chapter 22 with Fingerling standing on a balcony trying to decide whether or not to jump, after murdering his lover, Fabrizia.

The next day, Walter sees Ned the dog from the hotel room window and follows Ned back to the cemetery, where he meets a priest and the cemetery gardener, and learns that they have nicknamed Ned “The Guardian of the Dead” due to his fondness for sitting and watching the gravestones, with a special attention to the grave of Laura Tollins, a murder victim whose body was never found, so her grave lies empty. Walter returns home with a newspaper article about the murder of college student Laura Tollins (Rhona Mitra) by her psychology professor, Kyle Flinch (Mark Pellegrino), with whom she was having sexual relations; the circumstances of Laura’s murder are almost exactly the same as the murder of Fabrizia in The Number 23. Walter thinks the professor wrote the book as a secret confession and goes to see him in jail. The man proclaims his innocence of the murder and of being the author, stating he would never choose a pen name like “Topsy Kretts,” pointing out that it is an obvious homophone for “Top Secrets.”

'The Number 23': You Do The Math, By Kurt Loder. It's a novel, or a memoir or something, written by a man named Topsy Kretts (get it?). He was apparently driven mad by the number 23, too. Agatha buys the book (titled The Number 23 written by Topsy Kretts) for her husband Walter as a birthday present. Why does she choose this book? Is it a coincidence? Doesn't she know about the past. The Number 23 is a “thriller” (although I could count the thrills on Buster Bluth’s left hand). (Topsy Kretts, because apparently Farty McDiarrhea was a little too spooky) to break the.

Robin finds a PO Box address hidden in the back of the book and they send a shipment of 23 boxes to it hoping to draw out the book’s author. They wait for Topsy Kretts (Bud Cort), who, upon being confronted by Walter, becomes panicked, proclaims Walter should be dead and slits his own throat. Inside the man’s pockets, Agatha finds an ID card belonging to a mental institution, showing the man is Dr. Sirius Leary. She goes to the abandoned asylum and finds Leary’s old office. In a cell covered in calculations of the number 23, she finds an old box with Walter’s name on it. Meanwhile, Robin and Walter discover that every 23rd word on every 23rd page of the book spells out two messages which lead them to “Casanova’s Park.” They arrive at the park late that night and go down a staircase marked “The Steps to Heaven” which consists of 23 steps. At the bottom, they dig deep in the ground and discover a human skeleton, presumably Laura Tollins, but when they return with a police officer, the bones have disappeared. Walter confronts Agatha about taking the bones and accuses her of writing the book. She admits to moving the skeleton to protect him, but tells Walter that it was he who wrote the book, and shows him the contents of the box from the Institute. In the box there is a manuscript of The Number 23 with Walter’s name on it and an ankle bracelet that belonged to Laura Tollins.

He returns to the hotel to room 23, where he tears down the wallpaper and finds the missing 23rd chapter written all over the wall. The chapter explains that the story was Walter’s confession and he remembers why he did everything: his father killed himself after the death of Walter’s mother. His suicide note was just pages of things that added up to the number 23. Walter loved Laura Tollins and grew obsessed with 23 because of his father. Laura began sleeping with her professor. Walter tried to warn her about the number being dangerous and how it was going to come after her. She told him he was crazy, daring Walter to kill her. Walter went into a rage, stabbing her and burying her in the park, which Ned observed. The professor was the first to walk into the room where Laura was killed, and he picked up the knife, covering the weapon with his fingerprints and staining his hands with blood. With this evidence, he was convicted for the murder. Walter went to the hotel room, wrote The Number 23, placing the 23rd chapter on the walls, floor and every other part of the room, and then jumped off the balcony. He survived but suffered severe injuries and trauma. Walter ended up in the institute where Dr. Leary worked. Dr. Leary read the manuscript and, after publishing it, became obsessed with the number 23 himself. Because of the fall, Walter suffered memory loss and upon leaving the institute he met Agatha.

Agatha finds Walter at the hotel, and tries to assure him that he is no longer the person he was when he wrote the book. He insists that he is a killer, accepting the fact that he murdered Laura Tollins, and tells Agatha to leave before he kills her too. Agatha pushes a letter opener into Walter’s hand, saying that if he is indeed a killer, he can easily kill again, and dares him to kill her. She tells him that she loves him. Walter tells her that she can’t love him because no one can, mirroring an accusation made by Laura on the night of her murder. He leaves the hotel and runs into the street, where he nearly allows himself to be run over by a bus, but steps out of the way at the last minute when he realizes his son is watching. As he embraces his family, a voiceover by Walter tells the audience that he turned himself into the police and is awaiting sentencing, having been told that the judge will likely go easy on him since he turned himself in. A funeral procession takes place in front of Laura Tollins’s grave, where it is implied her body has finally been laid to rest, as Flinch observes, finally a free man.

At the end of the film, viewers can see the Bible reading from Numbers 32:23: “Be sure your sin will find you out.”

see :

The Number 23 is a 2007psychological horrorthriller film about a man who becomes obsessed with a novel that he believes was written about him. As his obsession increases, more and more similarities seem to arise.

Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Fernley Phillips.

Walter Sparrow[edit]

• A week ago, the only thing I thought was out of the ordinary was that it was my birthday.
• [In the bookstore, first holding the book and taking a look at it] The Number 23. A Novel of Obsession by Topsy Kretts. A heart wrenching odyssey into paranoia. One of the most horrifying metamorphoses ever told. Beware the dog next door.
• There's no such thing as destiny. There are only different choices. Some choices are easy, some aren't. Those are the really important ones, the ones that define us as people.
• I'd like two words on my tombstone: what if.
• Chapter 23. You can call me Fingerling. My real name is Walter. Walter Paul Sparrow. What you've read so far is not the whole truth. Much has been changed to protect the innocent... and the guilty. I once read that the only philosophical question that matters is whether or not to commit suicide. I guess that makes me a philosopher. You can say it was my inheritance. After my mother's death, my father couldn't cope. He didn't leave a note... just a number. That number followed me from foster home to foster home till college when I met her: Laura Tollins. I thought she'd help me forget my father's number. It was a mistake to think I could escape it. I loved her. And I thought she loved me. Until my father's number returned to haunt me. That fucking number... When I circled every 23rd letter of her note... it became clear. The number had gone after me. And now it wanted her. I was right. She was in danger. I just didn't realize the danger was me. What began as a suicide note, turned into something more. Much, much more.
• Of course time is just a counting system... numbers with meanings attached to them.
• [talking with his son about his girlfriend] Hey, she's a nice girl. Make sure she stays that way.
• She had a face that was meant to smile.
• Once upon a time there was a dog. Lived a life of terror, feared no one. Although his teeth were sharp, and his belly full, his heart was empty. He decided to go on a journey to a land far far away. But he came upon a wooden shack one day with a thin old man inside, and he invited him in. The dog was overjoyed, and that night warm smoke billowed from the chimney above. Oh, what odd smelling smoke this was. You see, the land was China, and in China they eat dogs.
• To die there in the street would have been easy. But it wouldn't have been justice, at least not the justice fathers teach their sons about. I'll be sentenced in a week or so. My lawyer says the judge will look kindly upon me for turning myself in. Maybe it's not the happiest of endings, but it's the right one. Some day I'll be up for parole, and we can go on living our lives. It's only a matter of time. Of course, time is just a counting system — numbers with meaning attached to them — isn't it?

Robin Sparrow[edit]

• Skeletons can't just get up and walk away! You were right. That man wasn't the killer, the real killer is still out there and he knows dad's onto him.

Isaac French[edit]

• People only pray because they think God will help them if they do.

Dialogue[edit]

Agatha Sparrow: You would never hurt anyone.

Walter Sparrow: [whispering in a dark, eerie, but calm voice] How do you know?

Walter Sparrow: [finding a knife in her purse, laughing in disbelief] What's this for, Ag? What are you going to do with this?

Agatha Sparrow: I... I took it to protect us. From... whoever we were going to meet at the mailbox facility.

Walter Sparrow: Intending to kill that poor old man who you got to publish your book? To protect your little secret?

Agatha Sparrow: [Flashback] I'll take care of it!

Walter Sparrow: [Present] He was ALIVE before you sent us away!

Agatha Sparrow: Robin will hear you.

Walter Sparrow: Oh, we wouldn't want that, would we? We wouldn't want our son to know the horrible truth about his mother!

Robin Sparrow: [walks in] Mom? Dad? What's going on?

Walter Sparrow: She's Topsy Kretts; she wrote the book!

Agatha Sparrow: No, it's not true. Now your father's going to put down the knife. Aren't you, Walter?

Walter Sparrow: Tell him the truth.

Agatha Sparrow: Walter...

Walter Sparrow: Tell him... how you took the skeleton.

Agatha Sparrow: Yes, Isaac and I took the skeleton...

Robin Sparrow: You did?

Agatha Sparrow: And I'd do it again! But I did not write the book.

Walter Sparrow: Don't lie! 13 years. 13 years of lies! NO MORE!

Agatha Sparrow: Don't do this to us, Walter!

Robin Sparrow: Mom, who wrote the book?

Walter Sparrow: Tell him who wrote it. [whispering] Tell him.

Agatha Sparrow: ...You wrote the book, Walter.

Taglines[edit]

• The truth will find you.
• First it takes hold of your mind...then it takes hold of your life.
• A number is just a number. Or is it?

Cast[edit]

• Jim Carrey - Walter Paul Sparrow / Detective Fingerling
  • Paul Butcher - Young Walter / Fingerling
• Virginia Madsen - Agatha Pink-Sparrow / Fabrizia
• Logan Lerman - Robin Sparrow
• Danny Huston - Isaac French / Dr. Miles Phoenix
• Rhona Mitra - Laura Tollins
• Bud Cort (uncredited) - Dr. Leary
• Chris Lajoie - Benton
• Mark Pellegrino - Kyle Flinch
• Lynn Collins - Isobel Lydia Hunt ('The Suicide Blonde') / Mrs. Dobkins / Young Fingerling's mother
• Michelle Arthur - Sybil
• Ed Lauter - Father Sebastian
• Corey Stoll - Sergeant Burns
• Tom Lenk - Bookstore clerk
• Bob Zmuda - Desk clerk

The Number 23 Book By Topsy Kretts

External links[edit]

• The Number 23 quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• The Number 23 at Mojo
• The Number 23 at Rotten Tomatoes

The Number 23 Book By Topsy Kretts