"9", Movie Review

Shane Acker, 2009

Pros: interesting characters, post-apocalyptic world, lots of action

Cons: uses info dumping to explain plot elements, I found 9 surprisingly unsympathetic

This animated feature came out of a short film by Mr. Acker (which is excellent). The fleshing out of the characters and plot loses some of the mystery and horror of the short.

A ragdoll with the number 9 on its back wakes in a laboratory. It discovers others of its kind hiding out in a cathedral after watching #2 get kidnapped by a mechanical cat. His insistence on saving 2 changes their world.

The story is interesting, though its reliance on a naive mistake struck me as somewhat cliched and made me dislike the character 9 (more on this below).

That aside, the animation is incredible, there's lots of action and tense moments. It's definitely worth seeing.



And if you haven't see Shane Acker's short that 9 was based on, check it out here.

*** SPOILER ALERT ***
















I got the feeling that I was supposed to find 9's ignorance and innocent endearing. Instead I found his determination to act without understanding himself and his world to be arrogant. His ignorance causes 2's death and awakens an enemy who claims the lives of several other ragdolls. Not exactly endearing characteristics.