11:11

At the age of seven, Sara witnesses the murder of her parents by two criminals who had just escaped from prison. The killers leave the numbers 11:11 written in the mother's blood near her body before being shot dead by Sara herself. Eighteen years later, Sara is in college and still haunted by the tragic event, which is often brought back to her by the frequent appearances of her mother's ghost. The arrival of a mysterious woman, who seems to have lived in Sara's shadow all this time, and the occurrence of strange fatal accidents targeting those who mistreat the girl, mark the beginning of a chain of events connected to the numbers 11:11 and a mysterious prophecy. It is said that some individuals frequently experience an altered state of perceptual awareness, manifested through the recurrent appearance of the numbers 11:11, often on digital clocks. From this premise comes "11:11 - Fear Has a New Number," a 2004 Canadian film that resurfaced in Italian theaters for a brief run at the start of summer 2006, likely to ride the wave (and beat the clock) of the anticipated success of the equally metaphysical and paranormal remake of "The Omen." A bad and pointless film, these two adjectives suffice to sum up this lackluster feature directed by Michael Bafaro; a film that attempts to explore numerous paths but fails to develop any of them. It begins with the story of the numbers 11:11, framed in a paranormal thriller context, but this topic is completely abandoned in the last half hour of the film; it tries to build a ghost story, with the continuous appearances of the protagonist's dead mother, but this too makes no narrative sense and is also dropped in the final part. It also ventures into the realm of a fantastic slasher à la "Final Destination," featuring deaths seemingly dictated by fate, though they are never spectacular or remotely gory; another futile detail that serves merely as a narrative ornament to occasionally capture the viewer's attention. In the final fateful half-hour of "11:11 - Fear Has a New Number," after everything built over more than an hour of the film is inexplicably abandoned, the story takes the difficult route of apocalyptic prophecies, a theme that poorly fits with the rest of the plot and is, naturally, also underdeveloped and left hanging with an irritating and, frankly, rather idiotic ending. Nothing can save "11:11," neither Bafaro's dull and overly TV-like direction, utterly incapable of creating even the slightest tension, nor the performances of the cast, from the mediocre lead Laura Mennell to the terrible Paul Dzenikiw as Sara's best friend. The disjointed screenplay is by Pat Bermel, who also penned the poorly executed slasher "Ripper - Letters from Hell." Avoid at all costs.