Recent Reviews
DVD Review: House of 9
By Dave Dreher
Feb 21, 2006, 21:15

If Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians somehow hooked up with Saw the ensuing child would be called House of 9.  On the surface that may sound like the start to a review of an awesome film, unfortunately that is not the case.  The similarity that I draw is based solely on plot point and has nothing to do with the quality of the film.

House of 9, on the surface has a lot going for it.  Nine complete strangers are kidnapped off the street, out of their homes and places of employment and awaken in a house, a fortress would actually be a better description, maybe a prison best fits the circumstance.  All entrances and exits are blocked.  The doors are solid metal, what were windows are now bricked and cememted shut.  The film opens with the fore mentioned nine folks getting picked off the street and awakening on cots in the house.  We quickly learn the back stories of the lead characters, all played by unknowns (at lease to me) with the exception of Dennis Hopper who plays a priest.  We have the usual cast of conflicting characters, the rapper, the cop, the punk, the married couple, you know the story.  Once the initial “they all wake up and figure out something is wrong” moments the film quickly becomes a boring exercise in watching people slowly, oh so very slowly melt down in the face of their situation.

After the first 20 minutes the film slows to a crawl as an attempt is made to make us all “care” about this cast of victims.  For me the film fell well short of making that happen.  As expected people start to die not by the work of the madman who has imprisoned them but instead by stupidity.  As is always the case people when left with the chance to work together will ultimately break down and whack each other.  Survival of the fittest, it is an old story and not a particularly interesting one.

The film is just another attempt to cash in an the success of SAW and other films in that vein of “reality” based horror.  Put folks into an impossible situation and then watch them implode and twist the ending so that we are all shocked at what has actually been going on.  Problem with House of 9 is that by the time the twist ending shows itself you don’t give a shit.

As I stated earlier, the premise of the story in kind of interesting but the way that House of 9 is put together you are just kind of left with a feeling of time lost.

House of 9 is a waste of time.