The Thirteenth Floor

MOVIE #1,382 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 02.19.24 • VOLUME LVIII • I think this benefits from not having any big A-list talent in it. 25 years later, it might be seen as the forgotten movie in somebody's filmography. But now it’s simply the film philosopher Slavoj Žižek called “much better than The Matrix” (which it lost to for the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film). I’m not sure about that, but I did really enjoy this one. It doesn't look nearly as cheesy as you might expect from the premise and release date. Sure, the effects are dated but they’re subtly deployed and what dust they have on them I found charming.

This has an interesting provenance as well: it’s is loosely based upon Simulacron-3 (1964), a novel by Daniel F. Galouye, and a remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s miniseries World on a Wire (1973). It wasn’t a total flop (it made back its $16-million budget) but I have no recollection of it ever coming out. The plot surrounds a vision of present day Los Angeles and a multibillion-dollar computer enterprise that’s completed a virtual reality (VR) simulation of 1937 L.A., filled with simulated humans unaware they are computer programs. The big classic Hollywood score and neo noir aesthetic both pretty much work, especially juxtaposed within the sci-fi genre. Of course, there’s a major twist that ends with this 2024 (!) vision of Southern California…


The movie is well-paced and features a nice cast, including great characters Armin Mueller-Stahl and Dennis Haysbert, as well as a delightfully weird Vincent D'Onofrio performance. German director Josef Rusnak would go onto helm the back-to-back late 2000s Wesley Snipes action vehicles, The Contractor and The Art of War II: Betrayal, as well as the 2009 remake of Larry Cohen's It's Alive, among others.

I haven’t seen The Matrix in a while so can’t say for certain how it stacks up, but this is a fairly prescient, under-the-radar film that seems ripe for rediscovery.

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The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction neo-noir film written and directed by Josef Rusnak, and produced by Roland Emmerich through his Centropolis Entertainment company. It is loosely based upon Simulacron-3 (1964), a novel by Daniel F. Galouye, and a remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s miniseries World on a Wire (1973). The film stars Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Dennis Haysbert. In 2000, The Thirteenth Floor was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, but lost to The Matrix. It was released on April 16, 1999.