Macabre Movie Mausoleum: Nine Dead
CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL is in this movie!!!
… ahem… sorry for my outburst. Let us try this again…
Welcome my little tombstones and grave toppers to the final installment in Macabre Movie Mausoleum for Geekade’s 31 Days of Halloween. Following this, the feature will switch to monthly.
Now back to my original point. Clarissa from Clarissa Explains it All is in this movie. It has to be great, right? Then again, perhaps there’s a reason I chose the least flattering picture of her I could find. Read on to find out.
“Nine Dead” (2010)
Director: Chris Shadley
Stars: Melissa Joan Hart (huh, who knew she had a real name?), William Lee Scott, and John Terry
As mentioned earlier (multiple times) the movie stars Melissa Joan Hart from my childhood fame (you read that right). She is one of nine people kidnapped by a masked individual. Everyone is handcuffed in a “Saw”-esque room and are told that in order for them to live, they have to figure out what each of them have in common that resulted in their kidnapping. Every ten minutes the masked man will return and randomly kill one of them if they don’t discover why they are there.
The hook of the movie is watching them try and piece together how they are all connected and why their captor cares. On this front it works, however some of the connections were pretty weak, while others are downright impossible for the captor to have discovered, which was a big drawback at the end.
At two points in the movie when the director wanted to show a lapse in time they showed a car driving on an otherwise deserted road. Two things about that. 1) They never explain who’s car it is or why it’s important. 2) It was the SAME FOOTAGE RECYCLED!!! I hate it when movie makers get blatantly lazy, and expect the audience to simply roll along.
The more I think about the movie the less I like it. However, during my viewing it was entertaining enough to keep me wanting to know what each person had done and how they fit into the larger picture. For that I rate the movie…
The premise was interesting and the movie was satisfying to a point. This wasn’t the torture porn that the Saw movies are, but it also failed to be as psychological as it clearly intended to be, resulting in a lukewarm movie. About half of the actors were well cast and played their roles convincingly, including the child molester, accountant, loan shark/strip club owner and assistant district attorney (Clarissa, sorry I mean Melissa). The bad acting took away a lot from the movie especially the cop. I’m naming their characteristics because none of the other actors were names/faces I recognized from anything else. The cop was familiar, in the way of, ‘I’ve seen him in something before.” and “He’s that guy in that movie’. I’m sure if I looked him up, I’d know something he was in, but his poor acting doesn’t deserve that name recognition.
Oh wait, I forgot to mention that in the listed credits was Daniel Baldwin. However, he was literally in the movie for under a minute and had 2-3 lines. He just showed up and was gone. For that lack of respect to a Baldwin (even Daniel) I’m demoting this movie..
For more of the good Dr’s horror ramblings, head over to http://www.azarrising.com/
