Nine Dead

NINE DEAD is a film entirely derivative of one of the SAW sequels in its storyline of a group of nine strangers who are kidnapped and trapped in a room by a mysterious killer. As he promises to kill the group one by one, they must work together to find out why they've been chosen and how they can hope to free themselves from their terrible situation.

This is a B-movie through and through, with a premise that naturally evokes tension let down by some very pedestrian execution. When former SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH star Melissa Joan Hart is the best they can do for a big-name star then you know the film is in trouble. Thankfully NINE DEAD avoids going down the 'torture porn' route which is to be commended, but the twists and turns are so resolutely silly that you can't help but be disappointed. The best thing about it? Daniel Baldwin's random, 10 second cameo.

A masked creep kidnaps 9 people, puts them in a room, handcuffs them to a tube. He tells them their mission is to find out why there are there. Every ten minutes he will kill one of them unless they tell him the answer. The group is made up of a cop, two street thugs, a Vegas strip joint owner/mobster, a DA, a priest, a homosexual, a goody two shoes guy, and an Asian woman who doesn't speak English. What ensues is the typical American psycho horror: a bunch of people screaming at each other, insulting each other, grandstanding, deceiving, unable to work together, sometimes trying to work together. Obviously, they won't be able to find the answer in the first couple of 10-minute blocks. They touch on an important issue but don't see it's significance until later. Eventually they start "confessing" their sins, what each did that could have made someone mad enough to devise such a plan. So we learn something about them all. But whenever 10 minutes are up, the masked guy shows up, picks one of them, tells him the reason why they are there and then kills him. How it all turns out is quite interesting, but the ending not satisfying at all.

I'm not a fan of the idiots-bickering subgenre of horror, but this one does work. It doesn't take the insulting to insufferable extremes like the reality-footage movies but rather focuses more on the story. And you do want to find out what the story is. Even though the answer to the puzzle is somewhat mundane it is effective. The ending however is so weak it's puzzling. Performances are very good overall, and that's really the key in a movie like this. And the movie does manage to build quite a bit of tension.

Oh my god. Oh my god.

So much potential. But the ending is just abysmal. Don't waste your time.

Not a bad watch for an afternoon. Nine apparent strangers are kidnapped and locked in a room until they figure out what they have in common. One is killed every 10 minutes until they figure it out.

First I'd like to point out that the version I saw from a Blu Ray was 87 minutes long and not 98 as it's said here, I don't believe it was a cut version but merely a miss in the information slip by the company.

Much like it was a miss to suggest that Daniel Baldwin is one of the stars in it, he is technically in it BUT for 9 and a half seconds (literally), more or less an extra in one scene.

Anyway back to the actual movie, it had potential, sure we've seen these kinds of movies before (strangers in a room have to figure out what connects them or they die) but that doesn't mean that they still can't be exciting if they are clever enough, with a couple twists and good acting.

Now the actual idea is in the end a decent one, BUT it's just that all sense of mystery is gone pretty much halfway through because the clues we are given are not so much clues as it is having the motive tattooed on our foreheads.

And the characters are for the lack of better words, pretty stupid.

The acting is mostly decent William Lee Scott stood out as one of the better performances while Melissa Joan Hart stood out for having the opposite, a really poor performance.

Overall though the characters were fairly one-dimensionally written and we are given no reason to actually care for any of their fates.

So yeah maybe watch 'THE KILLING ROOM (2009)', 'CIRCLE (2015)', 'SAW (2004)', 'SAW II (2005)' or 'CUBE (1997)' instead, as they are all better examples of this kind of movie.