I’ve been looking forward to Shane Acker’s 9 for well over a year now, and going into this year it was easily in the top handful of films that I was most anticipating. I probably set my expectations far too high, especially for a first time feature film director who was seemingly working in the delicate realm of children’s horror films. And while 9 didn’t meet my expectations, oh man did it come freaking close.

One thing I was not expecting is that 9 is a very simple, straight forward narrative. Not much in the way of deep themes and moral lessons for the kiddies. Oh sure, they are present and there even is a nice montage that explains how much greedy humans are at fault for the destruction of the world but that is hardly the focus of the film. This is a very simply plotted action film that most assuredly will scare the pants off your kids if you bring them to it. And they aren’t the only ones, as I’m quite sure the crazy cobra spider-thing with the disturbing baby doll head (The Seamstress) will haunt my dreams well into the next decade.

Which reminds me, the character design in the film is freaking amazing. Our protagonists are both strangely adorable and tenderly kick-ass at the same time, making it easy to see why Acker has been so quick to latch on to the term stitchpunk for the film. But that is just the beginning, the villains from The Cat Beast to the weird bat-bird (The Winged Beast) to said dream haunter to the Fabricator are all nightmarishly awesome. Whomever ends up making action figures for this film totally has my money, because I want to own every single character from this film.

Oh yes, for those of you insane enough to bring your kids to this film I give you a word of warning. 9 makes Bambi look like Swedish massage. You’ve got biological warfare, AT-AT’s blowing people to pieces, suicide and you even have something that RIPS YOUR SOUL OUT OF YOUR BODY!!! There is a reason this film is PG-13, because it will scare the shit out of you. Yes you, the adult. So don’t drag your 6 year old to this.

9 opens at the Lagoon Cinema on Wednesday September 9th.

I’ve been wanting to give people a heads up on the various odd or seemingly interesting films that will be coming out in the future with out having to invest too much time in the process. While I watch as many new releases as anyone, the focus of the site is to find movies already released for people to discover. But there are always movies that might fly under the radar, so One to Watch is a simple series devoted to promoting new films that might end up at the end of the long tail.

Hope you enjoy.

Film: 9

Directed by: Shane Acker

Starring: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer

Release date: 9-9-2009 (USA)