Nine Dead - .5/5

This is, honest to God, one of the worst films I have ever seen. There are bad movies that are awesome to watch and then there is "Nine Dead". I took a bathroom break about an hour into it and in the bathroom I had to give myself a pep talk and coax myself into going back out and finishing it. Considering that this bad boy got distrubuted into Red Boxes and even is carried in almost all Wal Mart stores, I feel as though the world just might be coming to an end.


"Nine Dead" is about nine strangers (couldn't have guessed it!) that find themselves kidnapped and held hostage in a concrete room handcuffed to poles and not knowing what the fuck is going on. Of course, our resident villain tells them that they are all here for a reason and that they have to figure out how they are all connected and the reason for their demise before they are released alive. The kicker for this one: every ten minutes he comes in and blasts one of the people until they figure it out. Take a guess where this goes from here.

Despite being a blatant and intentional rip off of the "Saw" franchise without any of the great things that made those movies Horror musts, this film REEKS of cliche elements and horrible writing. Oh yeah. The dialogue was enough to make me want to be the next on offed when the 10 minutes was up. This movie wanted so desperately to be smart and witty with its writing and ambigious morals that it was willing to sacrifice everything else for them. Which means, when the script and story are not near fleshed out enough to actually represent depth, that "Nine Dead" has nothing going for it. Not a single thing. All right, it has some uproariously bad lines in it. "You guys sound like my strippers" says the mob guy. Would have been funnier had I been blacked out on illegal moonshine. But its bad lines only get it half a star.

Of course, with a cliche and 'thinks it's shit don't stink' script, you would have to have actors to pull off the lines to make it remotely work. Well, shucks, looks like when the big star power you can pull here is Melissa Joan Hart and 5 seconds of a cameo for Daniel Baldwin than you know what to expect. Horrible monologues delivered with half assed enthusiasm. This just keeps getting better and better.

So if your actors suck and your script sucks, than you better have a visual director to carry this film to the end. Holy shit, you don't have that either do you movie? With its aweful pacing, standard amatuer night directing, and God help me I'm going to kill myself bad editing, then "Nine Dead" is batting nilch.

Honestly when it got to its stupid and hurried beyond logical conclusion ending, I was actually applauding. Not that the film had made me think about my life in some new and profound way, but that it was FUCKING OVER. "Nine Dead" actually had ending. There was a merciful God in this world that would end my misery as a film watcher. The sad part is that this film did have potential in its script. Some of the details could have been developed and deeped. Some of the characters could have been fleshed out (or portrayed as that way) and even some of the story could have been impactful. But it failed. On every single one of those moments that it could have succeeded.

There is a reason Horror, as a genre, gets a bad rap. It's films like "Nine Dead".

Written By Matt Reifschneider