Rating: 8/10

Writers: Pamela Pettler (screenplay), Shane Acker (story)
Director: Shane Acker
Cast: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer (all voice)
Studio: Focus Features

First of all, 9 is not a children’s film, by any stretch of the imagination, and I would hope that the PG-13 rating would convey that to prospective audiences, but it does bear repeating. It may be animated, but it tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world that is, on a base level, dangerous – but it also serves as a cautionary tale that extends far past its run time.

There is an inherent inventiveness to any animated film. After all, a whole new world must be created, no matter how much it may resemble “the real world.” The CG used in 9 is not especially ground-breaking in terms of technology, but viewed totally for aesthetic purposes, it’s breath-taking. There is fine attention to detail, particularly in terms of viewing the world like one of the dolls. At only about eight inches tall, even a “normal” world would be scary, but a destroyed shell of a world is unabashedly nerve-rattling. Director Shane Acker does not overwhelm his audience with too much too soon, and doesn’t rely on cheap tricks to scare us. The world he gives us is scary enough. But, despite the obvious fear that can lurk around every corner, this same world is filled with delights, even if they come at a premium.

Our band of main characters, nine “stitchpunk” dolls, are clearly inventive enough – it doesn’t get more clever than inanimate objects that can come to life and function as living beings (even if their wounds can easily be stitched up with a common sewing needle). But some of my favorite creations in 9 are some of the most terrifying.  Without giving too much away, the dolls must battle a larger creation that, like them, is conscious (albeit, with very different goals). The larger creation carries out his plans by making his own creations from found scraps in the ruined world. While these creations might resemble real world counterparts and inspirations, they all come with their own witty spin – villains that use needle and thread as a weapon, blimps that can simultaneously search for things and alert others of their findings “by hand.” In caring about our stitched heroes, these creations are the last thing we want them to face, but they are endlessly interesting to watch.

One of the things Elijah Wood (who voices the titular 9) and I talked about briefly in our interview, is what exactly went in to each character from their maker. Wood presupposed that 2 was a more refined version of 1, which is a fair enough leap – certainly 2 possesses a more human bent to his personality. But it’s more interesting to look for the more complex stretches – how indeed did the fundamentally sweet 9 come right after the brutal 8? It’s questions like this that make 9 (the film) hard to shake from your brain. It’s what you will be pondering when you walk out of the theater.

The main problem with 9 is a rare one to have. It’s too short (it clocks in at just under 80 minutes). Surely, it’s a difficult job to extend an eleven minute short into a feature length film, particularly when said short did not include any voicework, but the feature-length 9 feels stilted because of it. It’s a conundrum – 9 does benefit from jumping straight into the action, and using flashbacks to tell our backstory, but an expansion of those things would make the film longer. There is even an awkward beat near the fifty minute mark, when it almost seems as if the film is over. Considering it’s a film for adults, an extended run time does not seem too much to ask. But the level of immersion we get in just eighty minutes is enough to recommend the film quite highly.