Nine Dead

Nine Dead – the kinder, gentler version of Saw starring Melissa Joan Hart and eight actors I’ve never heard of handcuffed to stripper poles.

This poster looks much more…Human Centipede-y than it is. Actually, this poster looks nothing like anything about the movie.

THE PLOT:

Nine people awaken in a room, each handcuffed to floor-to-ceiling poles to keep them separated from each other. The group ranges from a few petty crooks, a skeezy strip club owner, a police officer, an assistant to the District Attorney, a priest, a convicted pedophile/rapist, an insurance papergrinder, to a non-English speaking storeowner. They are told that one of them will be killed every ten minutes unless they can figure out they have all been gathered there – including the ones that have been killed, so getting information fast becomes more and more vital as the movie goes on. If they get the answer right, the killer will turn himself in. Unfortunately, everyone in the room has secrets to hide and no one seems to want to place nice, even at the price of their own lives.

THE GOOD:

Melissa Joan Hart plays a bitchy lawyer and while she is still pretty much Melissa Joan Hart, I like Melissa Joan Hart so it didn’t bother me. The acting all around is pretty good and I believe the characters are “people” – although I have a hunch that just seeing Nine Dead on paper wouldn’t do much for me, meaning there must have been real strides in there on part of the director and actors to make this worth watching.

The killing is simple and effective – straight gunshot to the head or chest – and skips the mechanical wizardry we’ve come to expect from “trapped in a room by a killer” stories, allowing the movie to progress faster and focus on the characters instead of the violence.

The best thing about the writing was that it (appropriately! realistically!) steered the conversation away from the task at hand to talk of escaping, trying to escape, and accusations.

THE BAD:

What the writing excelled at with person-to-person conflict it totally bit the dust on death scenes and Melissa Joan Hart’s character. About 2/3 of the way through the movie the characters start having a lot of “change of heart” moments that feel very false (you’re going to have a change of heart NOW?!) and the aspects that define the characters (such as Melissa Joan Hart’s aggressiveness) widdle away into something completely different (turns into whining and passive-aggressiveness).

…said the angry, scary, gun-selling robber who had no interest in anything but keeping his mouth shut  despite the presence of a priest in the room.

My favorite death scene is the strip club owner who faces down the barrel of the gun because he feels he is being killed for how he does business, which he is proud of.

Everyone else seems to suddenly get all fruity, magically jump in front of bullets meant for someone else even though they’re still cuffed, etc. The other problem is that the killer gets reaaaaaallly close to everyone and whispers to them before he kills them (presumably who he is/why they are here) but instead of yelling it out to everyone before they are shot, or instead of trying to poke out his eyeballs or something, they just…die.

Every 10 mins the killer comes in to kill someone and we have the same conversation: “Why are you here?” “We don’t know, we need more time!” What, have you people never thought about how to deal with a serial killer before? You’re the worst bargainers ever.  The movie begins to get stale because apparently the writer thought copy/paste was climactic.

Anyone getting dejavu yet?

No?

Don’t worry, you will by the 5th time or so.

But the ultimate worst is the end. Our captives are dropping faster than pubescent boys’ pantaloons but they finally piece it all together, with no help to token bitch Melissa who’s “change of heart,” unluckily for her fellow cellmates, is to apparently to try to stop the truth from getting out at all costs because it….makes her look bad. So, just as she is about to be freed by the killer, she kills him, and the father of her child (who was one of the other captives), and the other survivor, and slips out a really obvious back door while the cops enter through the front to shut everything down, leaving loads and loads of evidence for them to find.  Away she slips into the darkness, to live another day and to care for her child we didn’t even know about until the movie was almost over. Total mood killer (no pun intended).

Melissa Joan Hart, Mood Killer.

THE FINAL VERDICT:

This movie is survivable but if you’re a diehard suspense-thriller fan, you might have to be chained to a pole yourself to make it through. While it has some great moments and good acting, it’s inconsistent at best and the ending will make you want to kill the writer for real. Ultimately, Nine Dead gets 2.5 poles out of 5.