HOUSE OF 9

Starring: Dennis Hopper, Kelly Brook, Raffaello Degruttola, Susie Amy, Ashley Walters, Morvin Christie, Hipplyte Girardot, Peter Capaldi, Julienne Davis. Suspense/Drama. 

Synopsis: Nine people are abducted and placed in a house by an unknown man who promises 5 million dollars to the one who will leave the house alive.  The nine people face, struggle with, and are ultimately defeated by  their inability to overcome their differences and by the selfish fight for food and survival.

Some people might consider this a poor(er) man's Saw 2, but it does seem from the information that this was in production back in '03, even before the original Saw. Its always interesting to me to see the natural progression or deterioration of the human condition when people are placed in intense and life threatening situations with others that they do not know. I'm not smart enough to psycho analyze it overall, but it seems to me that its is going to be really good or really, really bad. Simplistic, yes, but I think a fair description of what we expect to see, we just don't know which.

In House of 9, we quickly anticipate that it is all going to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly. The start of the movie deals with a couple of the abductions, but it is important in this type of story to really go overboard with your suspension of disbelief, because we have to believe that several adult people are abducted, almost simultaneously, with not one of them having a clue why or really how...yet they all manage to land in this super secure house at the same time. Well, o.k. Once you get by that, it is possible to enhoy the story...to a degree.

Surprisingly, House of 9 deals very little with any real attempt at escape from the house, the nine heroes are told by a mysterious voice that they are effective participants in game, with the winner walking out with a cool 5 million dollars. (One wonders, since the film is set in Britain, why the offer wasn't for pounds, but if its 5 mil, I guess you don't worry about stuff like that). There is no direction or hint from the Voice as to whether or not they are expected to kill one another, or whether they will encounter some pitfalls from the Voice himself. Immediately, we sense that the Voice might just be counting on the inevitable mistrust, envy, and narrow mindedness that comes in any crowd of humans. We soon see that he is right, which might just be why he picked these people in the first place.

Now, you might think that a gRoup of people containing a priest (Dennis Hopper Hoosiers) and a cop (Degruttola) would not lack for for unquestioned leadership, but you would be very wrong. In fact, only one of the gorup seems to pay the priest the type of respect you might think he'd deserve, former dancer Lea (Kelly Brook). The primary reason that anyone follows the cop's lead is that he has a gun. Ahhh, maybe a hint that the deck has been stacked a little. The angry young aspiring rap artist (Ashley Walters) sure thinks so, as well as the ankle bracelet wearing ex-con Shona (Morvin Christie). The former tennis star (Susie Amy)  makes it real clear that she is not going to lift one finger to help do anything and seems most intent on polishing off the liquor that has been graciously provided by the Voice. The May-December couple (Peter Capaldi, Julienne Davis) seem more concerned with their descent from their previous lofty financial status. Well, that's about it for any interesting subplots, to the extent that you find that interesting.

There is a scarce supply of food provided for the nine members at first, so rationing becomes the name of the game, but, once they start dying, the portions substantially increase.  The deaths come in the three of the four major categories: accidental, suicide (or was it?), and old fashioned murder. Frankly, there is not much sense to it, which was the point, in my opinion. When you get right down to it, how much sense does it make to kill another person?

The acting is uneven, Hopper fans, like myself, will be disappointed. First, he needed to decide whether he was an American priest in the U.K. or an American actor playing an Irish priest. Either would have been fine, but the accent shifts back and forth between the two for most of the movie. Second, the priest thing just didn't work.  Most of the  characters really were not given a chance to develop. The most interesting was Morvin Christie's Shona, the only character who was most evidently not one-dimensional.  Capaldi's Max is the most enigmatic and psychopathic, and its always good to have at least one of those. Kelly Brook's Lea is the most empathic, and its a toss up in my book for most irritating character between Walters Al-B and Susie Amy's Claire.

The ending is both predictable and unpredictable. Predictable because you just know there is going to be a twist and the "winner" will probably only get fool's gold, so to speak, but when that comes, it is a fairly fresh take on the lust for money. Its not thoroughly explained, but it is sufficiently shown so as to let us draw our own conclusions, which I like. I won't play spoiler here, but the one who does walk out with the dough is one you wouldn't have initially thought...unless, of course, you've seen enough movies (say more than three) to realize that there is almost always a formula, and in this type of movie the formulaic ending just all but tells you that it will be one of the "meek" characters. 

You might see this in your video store or online as a horror, but it is most certainly not a horror movie, nor does it pretend to be(except maybe on the DVD cover). I don't think there is quite enough depth in the script for it to qualify as a psychological thriller, after all, we would need to know something about these characters other than their names and occupations in order to get into their psyche, wouldn't we? Its a suspense/drama, and an average one at best. But, you could do a lot worse and, if you watch movies on a regular basis, you most definitely have.