Darren Lynn Bousman

(In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) Now that 2000 and 2012 are behind us, filmmakers are going to need to work overtime to find which chronologically spooky year should act as pretext for a big horror/catastrophe film. We’re still too far away from the Epochalypse of 2038, so filmmakers have to come up with something more creative. Or not, as is the case with 11-11-11, a typically underwhelming number-obsessed film that doesn’t do much with a once-a-century opportunity. Blending apocalyptic visions with demons and cultists, the film barely does the strict minimum required of a horror film, and doesn’t go much beyond that. It’s very much like being stuck with a painfully unimaginative crackpot for 90 minutes as he keeps repeating, “Eleven Eleven Eleven… It’s spooky!” over and over again. Writer-director Darren Lynn Bousman did much better movies before 11-11-11 but arguably not since then — in any case, this film is the blandest of bland horror movies, so perfunctory that it barely registers as horrific. It’s easy to imagine a similar film being produced for 00-00-00 or 22-02-02 or any other date in the calendar: there’s nothing special here in concept or execution, and nothing particularly good either.