House of 9

Director: Steven R. Monroe
Year released: 2005

THE CHARGE: Title ambiguity and unnecessary use of Dennis Hopper.

THE EVIDENCE: Marketers are soulless creatures devoid of conscience. That’s the only conclusion I can come to after comparing the marketing description of House of 9 to the actual movie.

The film offers the beaten-dead-horse premise of a group of people waking up in a house without knowing why they’re there. All the windows are bricked up and all the doors presumed to lead outside are sealed shut. An unseen man announces over some loudspeakers that they are there to entertain him, that he can watch them via hidden cameras all over the place and that the one person who leaves the house alive wins $5 million. Of the nine people in the house, only three are remotely likable and the rest are obnoxious cretins. If you can’t figure out five minutes into the movie which one’s going to survive, then remedial classes are in order.

The marketing blurb for the flick describes it as a cross between an Agatha Christie thriller and the Saw movies. It’s not. Not even remotely close. Just because you have a group of people being killed one by one, that does not automatically make you just like Agatha Christie. Hell, just because I can make spaghetti, that doesn’t make me Emeril Lagasse.

As for the Saw comparison... there are no traps, there’s no morality behind the story and there’s not that much blood. Most of the deaths are shootings, except for a hanging, a beating and a couple of stabbings. The only comparison to the Saw films is that they are all, in theory, horror films. That being the case, our friends in marketing may as well have compared House of 9 to The Exorcist or Nightmare on Elm Street. Even a comparison to Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein would have made as much sense.

OK, now that my tirade against the marketing crew is over, let’s look at what else is wrong with the movie.

First, it casts Dennis Hopper as an Irish priest. Yes, creepy Blue Velvet “Now it’s dark” Dennis Hopper. And he cares so little about the story that he can’t even be bothered to keep his Irish accent consistent throughout the flick. The man is in total sleepwalking mode here. I’ll just assume that the lack of effort was proportional to his paycheck.

"I used to be 'with it'. Then they changed what 'it' was..."

Second, it’s 55 minutes into this 86 minute long film before anyone dies. 55 minutes of people wandering the rooms of the house while engaging in brilliant philosophical discussions like “who’d be desperate enough to kill for $5 million?” and “hey, didn’t we meet at the same fashion show a couple of years ago?” Those 55 minutes are also punctuated by a five-minute long musical montage of everyone drinking and dancing. It’s like the navel-gazing kids from The Breakfast Club got spirit-crushing jobs, became bitter alcoholics, reunited fifteen years later and were ordered to kill each other. Which is pretty close to how Judd Nelson’s life turned out anyway.

Third, and the last point I’m going to bother with, is that the movie tries to be WAY too artsy. There are long scenes of characters just gazing into space or dramatically turning their heads in slow motion, between shots of artwork hanging throughout the walls of the house. It’s like director Steven Monroe’s primary stylistic influence was the museum scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, except that in House of 9, there’s no point to any of it and the artwork all sucks.

It's like a perfume ad directed by Tobe Hooper.

So there you have it. House of 9 is not the Agatha Christie/Saw thriller the marketing folks would have you believe. It’s more like a sad, jaded mishmash of John Hughes references disguised as a horror film. And even that description makes the movie sound more interesting than it really is.

THE VERDICT: House of 9 is GUILTY of preposterous pretentiousness and sentenced to release Dennis Hopper so he can take on less embarrassing film projects, like maybe reprising his role as King Koopa in a Super Mario Brothers sequel.