Number 13 (2006 short)
Summary
An academic lodges in room 12 of a drafty hotel in a small English cathedral-town where he was assigned to authenticate papers which appear to date back to the Reformation, awakens one night to find the door to the seemingly missing room number 13 has mysteriously appeared, prompting him to investigate with fearful consequences.
Details
- Release Date: 2006
- Country/Language: UK, English
- Genres/Technical: Horror, Mystery
- Setting: Gaslight UK
- Runtime: 40 min
- Starring: Greg Wise, Paul Freeman, David Burke
- Director: Pier Wilkie
- Writer: Justin Hopper (adaptation), M.R. James (story)
- Producer/Production Co: BBC
- Wikipedia: (link)
- IMDB Page: (link)
Ratings
MPAA Ratings
- Rated: PG (PG)
Generally family-friendly; the hotel room contains a print of Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights", with close-ups of its bizarre nude figures, but few viewers would find these particularly offensive, and the short should otherwise be a family-friendly weird ghost story.
Tentacle Ratings
A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:
- SS___ (Two Tentacles: Barely Lovecraftian; vaguely similar in tone)
The original story ("Number 13 (fiction)") might well have been a template for Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House (fiction)", with a sinister British Bishop and the weirdly impossible Room 13 standing in for Keziah Mason and her equally impossible attic chamber.
Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.
Reviews
Review Links:
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Synopsis (SPOILERS)
Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)
An academic lodges in room 12 of a drafty hotel in a small English cathedral-town where he was assigned to authenticate papers which appear to date back to the Reformation, awakens one night to find the door to the seemingly missing room number 13 has mysteriously appeared, prompting him to investigate with fearful consequences.
Notes
Comments, Trivia, Dedication
Associated Mythos Elements
- fiction: "Number 13 (fiction)"; compare/contrast with "Dreams in the Witch House (fiction)"
- tome: antiquarian papers
- race: Witch, Ghost, Elemental
Keeper Notes
- Might be easily adapted to a variation on the famous Call of Cthulhu scenario, "The Haunting (aka The Haunted House) (Scenario)", with simply a change of setting to a hotel room....
