Reel Advice From the Video Store Guy

13 Seconds

**

DVD

Directed by

Jeff Thomas

Written by

Jeff Thomas

Cast

April Cole .... Cara

Daniel Rain .... Gage

Kevin Kuras .... Mac

Robert Yensch .... Colin

Sarah Corbin .... Talia

Spencer Stevens .... Musato

Stuart Stevens .... Teen Killer

Ren Smith .... Teen Killer

Jeffery L. Thomas .... Martin Solo

Robert Miller .... Sidetrack

Esa Scott .... Shapiro

R

91 mins

Horror fans nationwide have been, from what I can tell, waiting with bated breath for this one to come out.

And just why, I can't tell. 13 Seconds will prove to be by lengths incomprehensible and terrifying, and the juxtaposition (wow, I can't believe I finally managed to slip that clunker in a column!) of the two will leave audiences scratching their heads.

So what we have here is the story of death and art.

By the way, no, I'm not talking about going to some horrific British gallery and discovering that some schmuck paid better than fifty thousand dollars so some guy could create an exhibit entirely around a closet with faulty wiring. Frankly, that would kill me.

Columnist's Advisory: The preceding statement was not a joke. This was an actual exhibit called "The Lights Go On and Off," and someone did in fact pay an awful lot of money to have it built.

This is about some really deranged art that deals in torture, death, and the fact that we all have exactly thirteen seconds between the moment we die and our soul is divorced from our body. What happens in those thirteen seconds before our souls move on to their inevitable reward or judgment is the focus of this movie.

I'll hand it to 13 Seconds. The first three minutes are among the spookiest ever seen by man. But after that, it just trends off into the land of the incomprehensible. Yet, while it pretty much sets up shop in the land of the incomprehensible, it also manages to become horrific, spooky, genuinely suspenseful and self-referential all at once. 13 Seconds truly is the scariest movie I can't understand.

Worse yet, a good portion, maybe a third or more, of 13 Seconds is shot in this impenetrable blackness. I really can't even see what's going on a good part of the time.

13 Seconds wavers wildly between total incomprehensibility and sheer terror, and no one ever knows just which side will hit next. It's like being locked in a room with Alan Greenspan and the Tasmanian Devil on coke. Do you have any idea what that's like? Sitting there, watching a movie, being occasionally terrified and then spending long minutes thereafter confused out of your skull, wondering if the DVD skipped or something because you really don't remember anything like this happening before and absolutely nothing about it makes even the slightest bit of sense...then all of a sudden, someone gets really flagrantly possessed and there's all this banging around and ghosties are screaming for your death because it will stop the pain. Subsequently, our characters wander into a hall, and we can't see a thing, and then there's another scream and what maybe could be blood or what could be hot fudge comes leaking out from under a table....

Do you see what I mean? This is what watching 13 Seconds is like.

The ending is just as confusing as the rest of the movie: a strange mishmash of psuedoreligious ideologies, bizarre creatures, and bloody scenework for days. If it weren't for the killing and mayhem, this would be avant-garde cinema, the likes of which would make the French themselves scratch their heads in sheer confusion, which means you, like me, probably won't really get it either.

The special features don't exist. Really. There are some audio options and a 'scene selection' menu, but barring that - nothing.

All in all, 13 Seconds is a strange mixture of the truly terrifying and the truly confusing. Whether or not you'll be scared depends largely on your tolerance for the confusing and your tolerance for the gut-wrenchingly horrific.

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