Shane Acker’s 9 opens on a world already finished. The humans are gone. The machines that killed them have gone dormant. What is left is a rag doll waking up in the wreckage, and a story that has to explain, in 79 minutes, how any of this happened.
It does explain, and that is both the film’s best quality and its problem. 9 is a movie built on a striking idea and a thin frame around it. Metacritic puts it at 60 out of 100, a score that fits a film worth seeing and hard to love.
Trailer, via thecultbox.
A Rag Doll Named 9
The premise comes from Acker’s own 2005 short film, expanded here with a script by Pamela Pettler. Elijah Wood voices 9, the last of the Stitchpunks — nine homunculus-like rag dolls created by a scientist who gave each one a portion of his own soul through a talisman. The scientist dies upon completing the final doll.
9 wakes after the machines have destroyed all organic life and gone dormant. He finds a working voice box, courtesy of 2, an elderly inventor voiced by Martin Landau. Then the Cat Beast attacks, abducts 2, and takes the talisman.
That sequence sets the film’s rhythm: discovery, attack, escape, repeat. One-eyed healer 5, voiced by John C. Reilly, rescues 9 and brings him to Sanctuary, the tower of an empty cathedral. There, dogmatic leader 1 (Christopher Plummer), his burly bodyguard 8 (Fred Tatasciore), and the eccentric clairvoyant 6 (Crispin Glover) are hiding.
The Talisman and the Fabrication Machine
The film’s central mechanic is the talisman, and it is the best thing in 9. Against 1’s demands, 9 and 5 follow the Cat Beast to a factory and rescue 2. 7, voiced by Jennifer Connelly, arrives and kills the beast.
Then 9 connects the talisman to the dormant Fabrication Machine and accidentally revives it. The Machine kills 2 by sucking out his soul. The others barely escape.
It is a genuine tragedy built from a single act of curiosity, and the film does not soften it. The Machine begins assembling new robots, including the Winged Beast, which attacks and burns down Sanctuary. With 7’s help, the Stitchpunks destroy the Winged Beast using the engine of a crashed bomber.
A Voice Cast Doing Quiet Work
The cast is heavier than the film needs, which is not a complaint. Plummer’s 1 is rigid and frightened, a leader whose caution has curdled into control. Landau’s 2 is warm for exactly as long as the story allows. Reilly gives 5 a nervous decency that keeps the group from reading as interchangeable.
Connelly’s 7 is the most interesting of the bunch — a warrior who arrives already knowing what the others are still learning. Glover’s 6, with fountain pen fingers and prophetic drawings, is the film’s strangest touch and its most underused.
Wood carries the middle. His 9 is the neophyte of the group, and the performance works because it stays small. The character convinces the others that hiding will do them no good, and Wood makes that argument sound like something a young person would actually say.
The 1940s That Never Were
9 is set in an alternate version of the 1940s, and the film wears that setting lightly. The bomber engine, the radio announcer, the dictator and newscaster voices in the margins — these are texture, not history. The war that ends humanity is a war of machines, and the film is not especially interested in how it started beyond the scientist’s commission.
That is a fair choice for a 79-minute movie. It is also where the film starts to feel thinner than its images. The Fabrication Machine is a great design and a vague antagonist. It has no argument, only appetite. The Stitchpunks are the ones with a conflict, and the conflict is whether to hide or fight.
What 9 Gets Right, and What It Does Not
The film’s scale is its strongest asset. Acker keeps the camera close to the dolls, so the cathedral tower, the factory and the library read as enormous. The abandoned library sequence, where mute scholar twins 3 and 4 reveal the history of the war, is the film’s best stretch of world-building.
The script is where it slips. The Stitchpunks are introduced faster than they can be distinguished, and several of them never get a real scene. The film’s tagline — “When our world ended, their mission began” — promises a war story. What it delivers is closer to a survival story with a war’s leftovers.
None of this is fatal. 9 runs 79 minutes and does not waste them. It has a clear visual identity, a real idea about creation and consequence, and one genuinely upsetting death. It received an Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures nomination at the 21st Producers Guild of America Awards, and that recognition is not misplaced.
Release and Reception
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2005 | Acker’s original short film 9 |
| September 9, 2009 | Theatrical release by Focus Features |
| 21st Producers Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures nomination |
The film grossed $49 million on a $30 million budget. Reviews were generally mixed.
Those are the numbers the source gives, and they are the numbers worth weighing. The gross covers the budget, and the nomination came from the Producers Guild. What the source does not say is whether the film made money for Focus Features, or what the studio expected. Without that, the box office figure is a fact, not a verdict.
The mixed reception is fair. The film’s tone sits between the horror its images suggest and the adventure its tagline sells, and critics split on which one they got. That split is the most honest thing about its record. A movie that pleased everyone would not have produced this particular argument.
When our world ended, their mission began.
That tagline is the film’s whole ambition in seven words. What it does not do is go further. 9 is a well-made, well-voiced, visually confident movie that never quite becomes the movie its opening shot suggests.
The short film, the feature, the score and the nomination are all on the record. What is missing from that record is a reason the film should have been longer, or a reason it should have been shorter. 9 is what it is: a striking idea, carried by a strong cast, held to 79 minutes, and left there.
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