Review - 9

Okay, so this is officially the first movie from the list of Movies I Think Will Be Awesome that I was wrong on. See, I don't just review movies that are awesome!

9 is an animated film directed by Shane Acker (his first movie) set in an odd apocalyptic future where machines have wiped out humanity. Really really unique story, right? What made me want to see it though, and what put it on my radar of possibly being an awesome movie, was the short film it was based off of, found here: 9 Short Film

In the end, the movie didn't live up though. It was visually creative and interesting, and the action near the end was quite satisfying, but it lacked depth. There was almost zero character development at all. Only 3 of the characters (1, 5, and 9) had any sense of development at all and that was quite minimal. I wished the movie was about 20 minutes longer just to get me emotionally invested in the story... which I wasn't at all the whole movie.

As for the post apocalyptic setting - I really didn't understand it. The antagonist of the movie was a machine-brain that could make its own machines to kill humanity and such. However, the machine brain was only located in a smallish-factory in what looked to be Europe circa WWII. I really didn't believe at all the entire movie that all of humanity had been killed. Instead, I believed this cingular town had been destroyed by a mean robot. After all, how in the world could this robot in a small factory have spread across the whole world and destroyed everything and then decided to just stay in the small crappy dilapidated factory? The place wasn't even big enough to create enough of an army to take out anything. Dumb. Or maybe there's further back story that Acker decided not to tell us.

So there you go. Uninteresting story, no attachment to the characters, and only about 80 minutes long. The only good thing about 9 is its extraordinary creativity. Considering this is Acker's first feature-length movie, I'll let some of this slide and blame it on being a novice. I'm looking forward to what he comes up next simply because I find his creativity so intriguing, but if his next film isn't great either... hmm.

If you're interested in this movie, wait till it comes to Netflix or TV and watch it.

Potential Based on Preview: 8.5/10
Actual Movie: 5.5/10