Jim Carrey's Only Serious Horror Movie Is One Of His Worst Projects

It's pretty common for comedic actors to take a chance on dramatic roles, trying to show they can do more than just tickle people's funnybones, but sometimes it doesn't quite work out. Actor Jim Carrey had more than proven himself as a comedic force to be reckoned with in the 1990s and early 2000s before showing off his more serious side in movies like the Andy Kaufman biopic "Man on the Moon" in 1999 and the surreal sci-fi romance "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" in 2004. Carrey could carry a drama, it seemed, and then he starred in the absolutely abysmal Joel Schumacher thriller "The Number 23." Though it was a modest box office success due in part to a pretty intense marketing campaign banking on Carrey's star power, critics savaged the movie — seriously, it only has a 7% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Look, I have a long history of defending Schumacher and Carrey's other big project, "Batman Forever," but there just really aren't many redeeming qualities to "The Number 23." It feels like a movie cobbled together from the aesthetics and ideas of other movies, with a bonkers central plot that revolves around a man who becomes obsessed with the number 23 and a book that seems to mirror his life.

Written by Fernley Phillips, who has no other screenwriting credits to his name outside of "The Number 23," the movie is a hot mess of visuals and ideas that never quite come together. As Walter Sparrow (Carrey) starts reading the "Number 23" book given to him by his wife and starts unraveling, convinced there's a massive conspiracy at play, the world around him seems to start crumbling a bit, too. "The Number 23" feels a little like someone watched films like "Memento" and the devastating "The Machinist" and said, "I can do that" without really thinking through why the various twists mattered. Instead, "The Number 23" is so wrapped up in selling its various twists and turns that it can leave the audience wondering why they really care. 

Carrey has been in some fantastic movies over the years, both comical and serious, but "The Number 23" just doesn't work. It's so deeply self-serious that it almost ends up coming back around to being funny, and while it's pretty stylish, it's also rather dated. Thankfully for horror fans, Carrey has at least been in one decent, somewhat-scary flick ... it just also happens to be a comedy. 

While "The Number 23" is a pretty bad time, the 1985 horror comedy "Once Bitten," which follows Jim Carrey's Mark, a virginal high school student who ends up as the prey of a 400-year-old vampire countess (Lauren Hutton), is a whole lot of fun. "Once Bitten" was the feature directorial debut of comedy television regular Howard Storm, and it's a delicious little 1980s sexy comedy with a bit of extra bite. Much like "The Number 23," "Once Bitten" was pretty reviled by critics, but it's developed a cult following in the decades since (in part due to regular screenings on Comedy Central in the 2000s and early 2010s). Certain things haven't aged perfectly, but what '80s comedy has, honestly? 

"Once Bitten" isn't flawless, but it is a lot of fun, ranking it among one of the best unconventional vampire movies out there. If you're going to watch Jim Carrey in something horror-tinged, make it "Once Bitten" instead of "The Number 23," or just go watch the horrors he unleashes as Fire Marshall Bill on the sketch comedy series "In Living Color" instead. Now that's entertainment.