The Thirteenth Floor I am he as you are she as you are me and we are all Inceptional? A review
The Thirteenth Floor was based on the 1964 Daniel F. Galouye novel, Simulacron 3. It debuted in 1999. Though hard to follow, with a less than compelling conflict and plot resolution, The Thirteenth Floor inspired enthusiasm in sci fi buffs.
The Thirteenth Floor
Directed by Josef Rusnek,this film is based on the 1964 Daniel F. Galouye novel, Simulacron 3. It debuted in 1999. Though hard to follow, with a less than compelling conflict and plot resolution, The Thirteenth Floor inspired enthusiasm in sci fi buffs. It was a nominee for the Saturn Award as “Best Science Fiction Film” of 1999. Unfortunately for The Thirteenth Floor, 1999 was the year of The Matrix, another mind expanding movie. Rats.
I know that The Matrix is beloved by many; The Thirteenth Floor is less so.
I found it every bit as flawed as The Thirteenth Floor and with its “mysticism,” incredibly pretentious and sophomoric. Because the intricate plot and guessing what’s going on is the whole point, I’m not going to reveal plot points. The film has a good cast, including Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Vincent D’Onofrio and Dennis Haysbert.
The Thirteenth Floor is not a good film but not entirely bad either.
Like Inception, a film much closer in structure and concept, the premise of The Thirteenth Floor is difficult to convey and so the solution is to blend in another, more easily understood genre. Inception gives us car chases and shoot-outs in our dreams within dreams. The idea, I suppose, is that those who lack the patience to follow the film’s complexity, will understand the language of violence.
The Thirteenth Floor blends in LA noir and a murder mystery.
The result, like Inception, The Thirteenth Floor has a feeling of disorientation. We don’t get to know any of the characters or care about the outcome; we’re too busy trying to crack the code–guessing what’s what. I like the idea of computer-generated, sentient beings who believe they’re human. Their limited existence reminds me of another hybrid movie–Dark City. Like The Matrix, Dark City has an element of mysticism but I didn’t think it nearly as pretentious. Very weird (in a good way for me) but lot’s more entertaining than The Matrix.
The concept of virtual reality is such a rich one that I hope someone will make a film like The Thirteenth Floor that explores it on its own terms.
i hope it trusts the audience. I hope it attempts to answer some of the questions it poses, such as what defines a human being. Along with the Star Trek holodek, television has done its own spin around VR territory, including 1995’s VE-5 and the Syfy’s current offering, EUREKA. Science fiction writers have long mined the territory of virtual reality, including my own second book, Babylon Dreams, where a whole industry competes for the consumer dollar by offering “after-death” destinations.