House of 9 (2005)

Must See Movie...

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The premise for "House of 9" may be familiar, but even if you have seen films like this before, there's enough good material here to make it entertaining. The premise is simple: a group of strangers are placed in a house from which there is no escape and are told that they must kill each other to win back their freedom (not to mention a big bag of money). People refuse to comply so they try to escape, but fail. Eventually someone ends up dead and things begin to spiral out of control until a couple of characters snap and start getting murderous.Though the film has its share of irritating characters (as any horror/thriller with this large of a cast does) I felt that they were believable and they balanced out the group of mostly calm and collected people well. As we get to know the characters better, we start to understand and sympathize with them, so they don't feel like stereotypes. There were times where I was thinking to myself "Ok, really? What are these guys, cartoons? How come they just can't get along like normal people?" But looking back at it, maybe they were never supposed to. I don't care what the masterminds within the movie said, I'm betting on the fact that this system is made to fail and see plenty of blood get spilled. Some of the performances are pretty broad, while other are decent, making the film often feel like it's all over the place. There are a couple of moments that are never really explained (an attack on a couple of people in the film is done by someone who is never seen) and there are a few set-ups that never pay off but it has enough twists and turns to keep you invested all the way through. As a thriller, it won't blow your mind but if you're even mildly curious about the premise I think you'll be entertained and satisfied with the story. (On DVD, October 28, 2012)

HOUSE OF 9 is one of those films I'd never even heard of until it showed up on an obscure TV channel in the middle of one night. What it turns out to be is a trapped-in-a-single-location thriller a la CUBE or SAW, with a typically disparate group of strangers waking up and finding themselves locked in a house. The story has been done before in MY LITTLE EYE, and the BIG BROTHER overtones are clear, but this kind of film is quite easy to do well and HOUSE OF 9 is fairly decent in that respect.The narrative will surprise nobody; initial tensions between opposing character types soon lead to all-out violence and eventual murder, and of course there's a twist ending to turn everything on its head at the climax. But aside from an occasional misstep - a couple of music interludes to pad out the running time, for example - this works well. The dialogue is snappy, the events that follow are surprising but believable, and it all hangs together quite nicely without descending into slasher film nonsense.The cast is interesting too: Kelly Brook is the nominal heroine and probably gives the best performance I've seen from her, as it's more understated than you'd expect and almost like she'd playing herself. Dennis Hopper is a laugh as the Irish priest, and there's novelty value in seeing a cast-against-type Peter Capaldi in a minor part. Watch out for Hippolyte Girardot's creepy husband, though...

I've really expected a lot of this film. First of all, I wanted to see the movie because I was expecting a dark, interesting atmosphere, some unique characters (the name of Dennis Hopper sounded promising to me) and some weird and interesting ways to see how some of the characters would die.Well, most of the characters are quite superficial first of all. Second, it takes a lot of time before anything happens that captures the attention of the viewer, the introduction seems to last very long, without exploring some interesting details about the nine persons. The dialogues are quite boring and always turn around the same things. When the killing game begins, I was disappointed, because there was a lack of imagination concerning the way the people would die and a lack of logic, because almost all of the characters acted way too stupid or aggressive. There is no surprising element anymore, everybody is losing his mind and control and the dark atmosphere that was slowly created during the long beginning of the film is destroyed when almost everyone is dying quite quickly and quite the same way.The only surprising element is the end of the movie, but the rest is somehow easy to be guessed and superficial.If you like the general style and idea of this movie (somehow stolen from a famous novel by Agatha Chjristie, though), I could recommend the movie "Mindhunters" for you where people die in more original and surprising ways and where the character of each actor is somehow important for the development of the movie.

big brother meets survivor as nine people are locked in a house and told only one will live to collect the five million dollar prize.This is a been there and done that in the extreme, with riffs from other better movies stolen. Whats worse then the fact that the film is so derivative is the fact that it changes the rules a couple of times. I hate when films do that since its a clear sign that the filmmakers were not clever enough to work out a clear plot. Clkealry they didn't trust themselves to come up with a fair way to the end. Flaws aside this is still watchable in an undemanding mood-though it is quite forgettable which is good since its not something you'll recommend 4 out of 10