Movie Substrate · Film
The Thirteenth Year (1999)
★ 6.6 · 246 ratings on TMDB
Cody's not just growing up... he's growing fins!
A teen learns that his birth mother is a mermaid after he begins to grow fins and slimy scales on his thirteenth birthday.
DirectorDuwayne Dunham
The emergence reading
In The Thirteenth Year, consciousness is carried by monsters and creatures — a plane of “mermaid adolescence”. The story fights on E8/E9 of the E0–E14 reality ladder, compressing identity, otherness, family, transformation.
↷ monsters and creaturesUSidentityothernessfamilytransformation
Same rung, same subject
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
Shrek 3-D (2004)E8 · family, identity
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)E8/E9 · identity, transformation
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011)E8/E9 · family, otherness
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)E8/E9 · family, otherness
Onward (2020)E8/E9 · family, identity
The Smurfs (2011)E8/E9 · identity, othernessSame subject, different rung
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.
Also hides consciousness here
Other films that move a human interior onto the same kind of thing.
Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)consciousness in monsters · monster hotel
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022)consciousness in monsters · monster society
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000)consciousness in monsters · mermaid kingdom
The Hole in the Ground (2019)consciousness in monsters · impostor‑child horror
Monster Family 2 (2021)consciousness in monsters · monster‑hunting family adventure
Coraline (2009)consciousness in monsters · other-worldSame subject, different mask
The same preoccupations carried by a different kind of thing — grief told through the dead, an animal, a machine.
Turning Red (2022)consciousness in animals · family, identity
Lamb (2021)consciousness in animals · family, identity
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)consciousness in aliens · family, identity
Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005)consciousness in aliens · family, identity
Pinocchio (2002)consciousness in objects · family, identity
Shazam! (2019)consciousness in abstractions · family, identity
