Walter Sparrow becomes obsessed with a novel that he believes was written about him, as more and more similarities between himself and his literary alter ego seem to arise.
On his birthday, Walter Sparrow, an amiable dog-catcher, takes a call that leaves him with a dog bite and late to pick up his wife. She's browsed in a bookstore, finding a blood-red-covered novel, a murder mystery with numerology that loops constantly around the number 23. The story captivates Walter: he dreams it, he notices aspects of his life that can be rendered by "23," he searches for the author, he stays in the hotel (in room 23) where events in the novel took place, and he begins to believe it was no novel. His wife and son try to help him, sometimes in sympathy, sometimes to protect him. Slowly, with danger to himself and to his family, he closes in on the truth.—<[email protected]>
Walter Sparrow is a family-man married with Agatha Sparrow, and works catching dogs in the Department of Animal Control and has a teenager son very close to his wife and him. On the day of his birthday, he is bitten by a dog and comes late to meet Agatha. While waiting for him, Agatha buys a detective book with a novel about the mystery around the number 23 in a bookstore as a gift to Walther. He becomes captivated with the story and obsessed with the number 23, finding many coincidences with his own life, and he decides to find the author, believing the story is about him. His further investigation discloses a mysterious situation that makes Walther paranoid.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Family man Walter (Jim Carrey) comes to find a mysterious red clad book that seem to resemble his life in ways he doesn't expect as his obsession with number patterns always coming back to 23 comes to a head he will frighten the ones that he loves. As the story plays out what will he find? Or does he won't to find it at all? Because of what he finds he could be gambling with his life or his sanity.—Corvus
Walter Sparrow is an animal control officer that becomes obsessed with a mysterious book that seems to be based on his own life. As soon as he opens the book, he notices strange parallels between what he reads and what he's experienced. But now he's worried that a fictional murder might materialize.—yusufpiskin
Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is an animal control officer married to Agatha (Virginia Madsen); they have a son, Robin (Logan Lerman). At a bookstore, Agatha begins looking at a book called "The Number 23" written by Topsy Kretts. She later gives Walter the book as a birthday present.Walter starts reading the book, noticing odd similarities between himself and the main character, a detective who refers to himself as "Fingerling". Walter begins to have dreams of murdering Agatha. After one such dream, he checks into a hotel where he stays up all night finishing the book, only to discover that it ends at chapter 22 with Fingerling about to commit suicide after murdering his lover.
The next day, Walter sees a dog which he had earlier tried to capture. It leads him to a cemetery and the grave of Laura Tollins (Rhona Mitra) a college student who had been murdered by her professor Kyle Flinch (Mark Pellegrino), with whom she was having an affair. The circumstances of Laura's murder mirror those of Fingerling's lover in the book. Walter thinks the professor wrote the book as a secret confession and goes to see him in jail. The man proclaims his innocence of the murder and of being the author, stating he would never choose a pen name like "Topsy Kretts," pointing out that it is an obvious homophone for "Top Secrets." Using A=1, B=2, C=3......Z=26, the dog's name, Ned, equals 14 + 5 + 4 = 23.
Upon discovering an address in the book, the family arranges a meeting with Topsy Kretts (Bud Cort), who, upon being confronted by Walter, becomes panicked, proclaims that Walter should be dead and slits his own throat. Inside the man's pockets, Agatha finds an ID card belonging to a mental institution, showing the man is Dr. Sirius Leary. She goes to the abandoned asylum and finds Walter's name on a box in Leary's office. Meanwhile, Robin and Walter discover that every 23rd word on every 23rd page of the book spells out two messages which lead them to "Casanova's Park."
They arrive at the park late that night and go down a staircase marked "The Steps to Heaven" which consists of 23 steps. At the bottom, they dig deep in the ground and discover a human skeleton, presumably Laura Tollins, but when they return with a police officer, the bones have disappeared. Walter confronts Agatha about taking the bones and accuses her of writing the book. She admits to moving the skeleton to protect him but tells Walter that it was he who wrote the book, and shows him the contents of the box from the Institute. In the box there is a manuscript of The Number 23 with Walter's name on it and an ankle bracelet that belonged to Laura Tollins.
He returns to the hotel to room 23, where he tears down the wallpaper and finds the missing 23rd chapter written all over the wall. The chapter explains that the story was Walter's confession, and he remembers why he did everything: his father killed himself after the death of Walter's mother. His suicide note was just pages of things that added up to the number 23. Walter loved Laura Tollins and grew obsessed with 23 because of his father. Laura began sleeping with her professor.
Walter tried to warn her about the number being dangerous and how it was going to come after her. She told him he was crazy, daring Walter to kill her. Walter went into a rage, stabbing her and burying her in the park, which the dog observed. The professor was the first to walk into the room where Laura was killed, and he picked up the knife, covering the weapon with his fingerprints and staining his hands with blood. With this evidence, he was convicted for the murder. Walter went to the hotel room, wrote The Number 23, placing the 23rd chapter on the walls, floor and every other part of the room, and then jumped off the balcony. He survived but suffered severe injuries and trauma. Walter ended up in the institute where Dr. Leary worked.
Dr. Leary read the manuscript and, after publishing it, became obsessed with the number 23 himself. Because of the fall, Walter suffered memory loss and upon leaving the institute he met Agatha.
Agatha finds Walter at the hotel and tries to assure him that he is no longer the person he was when he wrote the book. He insists that he is a killer, accepting the fact that he murdered Laura Tollins, and tells Agatha to leave before he kills her too. Agatha pushes a letter opener into Walter's hand, saying that if he is indeed a killer, he can easily kill again, and dares him to kill her. She tells him that she loves him.
Walter tells her that she can't love him because no one can, mirroring an accusation made by Laura on the night of her murder. He leaves the hotel and runs into the street, where he nearly allows himself to be run over by a bus but steps out of the way at the last minute when he realizes his son is watching. As he embraces his family, a voiceover by Walter tells the audience that he turned himself in to the police and is awaiting sentencing, having been told that the judge will likely go easy on him since he turned himself in. A funeral procession takes place in front of Laura Tollins's grave, where it is implied, her body has finally been laid to rest, as Flinch observes, finally a free man.
At the end of the film, viewers can see the Bible reading from Numbers 32:23: "Be sure your sin will find you out."
