The Thirteenth Floor Movie Review

I want to start by mentioning that I actually work on the 13th floor of a real live building in downtown San Francisco. My business card actually reads “13th Floor”. Reading my business card is more interesting than this film.

Interesting premise: Computer geniuses build a virtual reality machine that lets them go back in time to 1937 Los Angeles. Only the virtual people have feelings and emotions just like us; they don’t know they’re not real. But then they find out.

Horrible execution: Working from a screenplay from Rusnak and Centeno-Rodriguez – neither of whom have written anything I’ve ever heard of – and under the direction of Rusnak – whose only English-language credit is as second unit director on Godzilla, The Thirteenth Floor has little to no raw talent behind it. Rusnak obviously couldn’t put together a love scene if he was in it himself with Cindy Crawford — the film’s little tryst between Bierko and Mol drew howls of laughter from our audience.

On technical merits, Floor is an even bigger failure. I haven’t seen a film in the last 20 years that has such bad lighting and poor choice of film stock. And I’d be remiss without pointing to the hideously flawed soundtrack on our test print – or maybe it was the theater. (Maybe that was a blessing.)

After two good VR flicks: The Matrix and eXistenZ, I suppose we were ripe for a failure in going for three in a row. You know, in most buildings, the thirteenth floor doesn’t exist.

If only we had been so lucky.



Strike up the band. Send in the clowns.