11/11/11: Auspicious date?

Last night, David and I sat through “11/11/11,” a horror-thriller described on Netflix as “chilling,” and about some kid who’s scheduled to turn into the devil when he turns eleven years old on November 11, 2011 at 11:11 p.m.

The film has not been reviewed, but given the silly premise, we knew what we were in for.

A professor gets a new job and moves his family into university housing. But there’s something evil about the new place: the house numbers add up to eleven. And the neighbors (there were probably eleven of them!) come to welcome the family with unsavory cookies, and strange tales with references to the number 11. Important events all seem to occur at eleven minutes past the hour.

I’ll admit that I enjoyed the cheesy plot, but senseless details in the film drove me nuts. In an early scene, for instance, a degenerate neighbor calls the dad at his office to warn him that if he doesn’t kill his son, who’s the devil’s spawn, then she’ll have to murder the boy herself. Yet he doesn’t think to alert the authorities of the threat or beef up his home security. This isn’t plausible behavior, not even for a character in a supernatural horror movie.

Later in the film, the father finds his son passed out on the kitchen floor with his hands covered in blood. There’s a dead possum-like creature in the corner and it’s not clear whether the kid was eating it or trying to fend off its attacks. Instead of calling an ambulance, or trying to revive the boy, the dad washes the blood off his son’s hands and tucks him back into bed.

And what was up with that possum? Was that supposed to be some harbinger of death or evil? We’ll probably find out in the sequel, “12/12/12.”

Christmas 2011

Ayuko knitted that blue scarf for me a few years ago.