13 SECONDS

13 SECONDS
By Aine

13 Seconds was released in October of 2004 for those of you who missed it. I have to admit that it fell off my radar, but many things fell off my radar at that time. I’m sad to have missed it but glad I had the chance to play catch up and check out this interesting little movie.

Director and star Jeff Thomas has somehow succeeded in blending psychological horror and artistic conundrum. If you remember a film called Night Gallery you might be familiar with the premise of this film, or so you’d think. Even the name Night Gallery is cleverly inserted into the film when a girl looks at a CD that just happens to share the title.

I won’t say that 13 Seconds is without faults, it seems to suffer from what many low-budget or first time filmmakers films suffer from: the pacing is well, slow. Often times it is tempting to look away when the film has slow points, or characters that seem to be mumbling. At times there is excessive dialogue that fails to hold ones attention, which is something Tarantino films do as well, so I guess there is a fan base for that sort of thing. Also, many of the characters were completely unlikable, leaving the viewer with no one to “root for.” Though that may have just been because the characters were musicians; they were each just as shallow and self-absorbed as I remember musicians being back in the day.

Despite the above issues I had with the film, I have to say the creatures were genuinely frightening, the ending unexpected, and the parts involving the changing paintings were purely awesome and had a major creep factor. It definitely leads you along to believe something entirely different is going on than what ultimately happens. The ending seemed sudden and I was immediately jerked out of the dream/nightmare world I had been sitting in, much like the lead character. I don’t want to give anything else away about the ending, but I will say that I always expected Satan to seem less like a gay businessman, but to each his own. All I know is I’m laying off the drugs and staying away from creepy abandoned buildings.