Who are you going to believe–my simulation or your lyin’ eyes?

CAUTION: Contains “spoilers.”

Josef Rusnak’s 1999 The Thirteenth Floor certainly had an intriguing premise. Scientists in 1999 have created a simulation of 1937 Los Angeles in which people behave as though they were real–because they believe that they are. The lead scientist Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl) has created an avatar of himself as an antiques dealer, Grierson, middle-aged, happily married–but seemingly addicted to late nights at nightclubs, sampling the fleshpots of the city, abetted by a slick bartender, Ashton (Vincent D’Onofrio). When questioned, Grierson claims to have no memory of these events. It would appear that Fuller is jacking-in to his avatar, using him to experience pleasures otherwise barred to the respectable scientist/businessman.

Back in 1999, Fuller is savagely murdered, and it falls to Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko), Fuller’s heir-apparent to learn who killed his boss and why, before the LA police charge him with the crime. Using the avatar Johnny Ferguson, a bank clerk, Hall travels to 1937 LA and questions Ashton, who turns out to be an avatar of Jason Whitney, the project’s technician. Grierson/Fuller had left a sealed letter to be delivered to a Johnny Ferguson if he called for it. Ashton agrees to do this, but then opens the letter and reads it, with results that unhinge him.

A mystery woman claiming to be Fuller’s daughter Jane (Gretchen Mol) appears on the scene to further muddy the waters when it becomes clear that she wants to shut the LA 1937 project down, much to Whitney’s dismay and the puzzlement of Det. Larry McBain (Dennis Haysbert) who is investigating the Fuller murder. She seems immediately attracted to Hall, further arousing McBain’s suspicions, especially when it becomes clear that Fuller had no daughter, and she is in reality a supermarket clerk named Natasha Molinaro.

The mystery–what was in Grierson’s letter, what was it that unhinged Ashton, who is Jane, and why does she want to shut her “father’s” project down, and why is she almost immediately drawn to Douglas Hall –becomes clear in the big third-act-reveal. LA 1999 is as much a simulation as is LA 1937. Scientists in the future created it for much the same reason that 1999 simulations–Fuller, Hall and Whitney–created the 1937 one. But someone in the future has developed a god complex and is jacking-in to simulations at both levels to enjoy the thrills they afford, even to murder.

I’ve always enjoyed films that attempt to re-create the near-past to see how “right” they get it. It looked to me like Rusnak may have gotten a few things wrong, like the wrong-sized bills for 1937, but his biggest boo-boo came when he finally arrived at a depiction of the futuristic LA where the homicidal puppet-master is residing. But I don’t want to give away too much of what is otherwise an entertaining if undistinguished sci-fi adventure film. It’s not Dark City, but it makes no exalted claims for itself.