A horrid Razzie-nominated psychological thriller defended by its star and almost nobody else descends into darkness on Netflix

It’s a well-known fact of life that Jim Carrey is a phenomenal dramatic actor with the right material, but it’s also an ironclad statement to say that The Number 23 was one of the very rare occasions when his forays into straight-faced and serious territory went disastrously wrong.

With two Golden Globe wins from seven nominations under his belt, the rubber-faced funnyman had long since shed accusations that he was a one-trick pony who couldn’t do anything other than his tried-and-trusted slapstick comedy, but not even an attention-grabbing premise was enough to save director Joel Schumacher’s psychological thriller from a critical evisceration.

Carrey stars as a man who becomes obsessed with a book about the number 23, which sends him down an ever more dangerous path once he begins to realize that it seems to be based on his life, plunging him into a downward spiral as he does everything in his power to avoid living up to its bleak ending.

The film did make money at the box office after recouping its $30 million budget two and a half times over, but a horrendous seven percent Rotten Tomatoes score and Razzie nomination for Worst Actor are entirely fair, because The Number 23 is terrible no matter how many times its small band of defenders have tried to reposition it as an unsung gem.

Either way, Netflix subscribers are in the midst of making their own minds up, with FlixPatrol naming the unmitigated misfire as one of the streaming service’s top-viewed features this week. Make no mistake, it sucks and it sucks hard, but Carrey did go on record defending it by saying “I was able to explore the darker edges of my personality, which really was a blast and something different for me,” so there’s that.