Leofwine_draca HOUSE OF 9 is one of those films I'd never even heard of until it showed up on an obscure TV channel in the middle of one night. What it turns out to be is a trapped-in-a-single-location thriller a la CUBE or SAW, with a typically disparate group of strangers waking up and finding themselves locked in a house. The story has been done before in MY LITTLE EYE, and the BIG BROTHER overtones are clear, but this kind of film is quite easy to do well and HOUSE OF 9 is fairly decent in that respect.The narrative will surprise nobody; initial tensions between opposing character types soon lead to all-out violence and eventual murder, and of course there's a twist ending to turn everything on its head at the climax. But aside from an occasional misstep - a couple of music interludes to pad out the running time, for example - this works well. The dialogue is snappy, the events that follow are surprising but believable, and it all hangs together quite nicely without descending into slasher film nonsense.The cast is interesting too: Kelly Brook is the nominal heroine and probably gives the best performance I've seen from her, as it's more understated than you'd expect and almost like she'd playing herself. Dennis Hopper is a laugh as the Irish priest, and there's novelty value in seeing a cast-against-type Peter Capaldi in a minor part. Watch out for Hippolyte Girardot's creepy husband, though...

fedor8 "House of 9 Idiots". There; I have just renamed the movie, and will refer to it this way from this point onwards.Nine imbeciles are randomly picked, kidnapped, and then locked up in a large sealed house. The objective: the last male or female imbecile standing gets 5 million dollars. Sounds intriguing? Don't be fooled. Run. Run from this garbage. I've never considered Dennis Hopper a particularly good actor. He is passable when playing bad guys – which is the only use I see for him - so for somebody to so blatantly miscast him as an Irish priest was clearly asking for trouble. I have rarely seen or heard such unconvincing prayers – and there are at least a dozen of them. The less said about his corny on-and-off quasi-Irish accent, the better. So bemused was I whenever Hopper was trying to be all preachy and nice, that I was convinced (until his killing) that he was the man behind the game, or at least working for the people who orchestrated it all. What else was I supposed to think: that he is an IRISH PRIEST? I couldn't do that. What shall I compare it to… It would be like casting Roger Moore as Kublai Khan. No, I take that back, Moore would struggle less in that part.The rest of the casting isn't much better. We have an actress playing a former tennis star; she is neither athletic not strong, lacks discipline, and nothing she does or says even hints at the possibility that she could have ever done any sports, let alone professionally. The stereotypical angry black man – a rapper, no less - is a walking cliché, far too predictable with his violent outbursts and hippity-hoppity posturing hence boring/corny in all of his actions and utterances. Yet there is one actor/character who trumps them all. Nobody can touch Francis, played by the stupidly named Hippolyte Girardot (I didn't make that name up). It's hard to say who was worse: the fictional character Francis or the totally talent-free French actor with the silly name who played him with such clueless gusto. The two go hand-in-hand; they are a perfect match - like conjoined twins - and cannot be separated nor analyzed one at a time. For all practical purposed, Francis IS Hippolyte and Hippolyte is Francis. They are one. One big roll of French crap.His wimpy high-pitched voice, his dorky mannerisms, his goofy line-delivery, his nerdy motions, his stupid face, and his over-acting non-skills sink whatever little there is left in HO9I by the time of the "grand finale"; though in his defense, there is very little left to spoil by the time he gets to "shine". To add insult to the bad-casting injury, the part of Francis itself had been written using the collective brain-power of a family of trailer-park amoebas. Francis is shot in the stomach – point blank – and yet he SINGS, he DANCES, he RUNS, he JUMPS, and he kills people. The bullet injury actually gives him more energy, rather than drain energy from him. (Bullet wounds aren't what they used to be; perhaps humans are developing immunity against them – at least in pitiful thrillers written for the true hapless retards out there, the dumb shmucks that actually enjoyed this piece of celluloid litter.) Predictably, the "slightly electrocuted" vegetarian goodie-two-shoes brunette survives the second attack by Francis/Hippolyte, inadvertently killing him. Not on purpose! I must make that absolutely clear. She is a vegetarian hence a goody hence she cannot harm any living creature except through an accident.What happens after that, in the final scene, has to be seen to be believed. To merely write it down here would not only spoil your "fun" but would do injustice to the hilarity of the scene in question: it's a visual experience, sort of like 30s slapstick. It's the most belly-achingly funny twist ending in the history of all moronic twist endings. I can complain on and on how this HO9I rubbish bored me to tears with its ridiculous dialog, implausible characterization, and very little happening in the first hour, but what I cannot moan about is that the ending left me cold: I laughed very hard indeed, and for that I thank the movie. It wasn't much of a redemption, because I still consider HO9I to be generously awarded with the 1/10 (far too high, really, insulting other 1/10 movies some of which happen to be ten times better). The laugh was elicited unintentionally, but a laugh is a laugh, and that's all that counts. HO9I is hands down the most shoddily put-together crap-fest I have seen this year, and trust me there were many others. The acting, the dialog, the cretinous plot-twists, the absurd characterization, and by far the dumbest ending of them all: it's all here. The horrible music interludes and ludicrous deaths/murders round off the rest of the nonsense. If you are expecting something like the "Cube" or even "House on Haunted Hill", forget it. A certain Philippe Vidal, who is responsible for this amazingly daft script, has only this pile of amoeba-manure to his credit; nothing before or since this flop. (Check his bio.) Which brings me to the one redeeming value of HO9I: it cut short a writing career that shouldn't have ever started in the first place. As for the blundering director, Stevie Monroe, he stems from a movie clan; yet another silver-spoon-fed incompetent fool who had a movie career handed to him on a plate thanks to the high corruption i.e. nepotism in the sinking world of increasingly dumbed-down and low-quality cinema. His resume is a what-is-what of TV fluff and big-screen garbage, though even he might be ashamed by this pathetic crap. Nepotism is a disease, like a zombie virus outbreak that spreads exponentially until nothing and nobody can stop it.

Whitetygrr This movie seems to have mixed reviews and has been compared to others and I do see similarities however there are plenty of movies out there that are similar to another or a total rip off or remake whatever so just because it may have similarities does not make it a bad movie. My only issue with the movie is a couple of the first few characters that were offed I was actually liking better than some of the ones that were left towards the end however the story obviously wouldn't have been the same. The movie for the most part kept my interest though I did nod off at one part but maybe that's because it was three in the morning! What really made this movie was the ending. I love a good plot twist or surprise ending and this has a pretty good one. Now this is considered horror most likely due to the violence but I would consider it more of a psychological thriller.

Theo Robertson I caught this by chance flicking through the channels . Dennis Hopper ? He is a very underrated actor best known for playing bad guys . Likwise Peter Capaldi he has recently been picking up good parts in film and television recently . However I should have paid more attention to the supporting cast . Kelly Brook is someone best known for modeling while Susie Amy is best known for her role as Chardonnay in British trash classic FOOTBALLERS WIVES . No , actually she's known only as Chardonnay which gives a clue as to her talents and her non career The story starts with nine characters getting chloroformed and abducted by an unknown assailant . They wake up in a basement of a house where a transmitted voice tells them they're going to play a game where the last one alive will win $5 million and be given their freedom . Obviously the voice has seen both BIG BROTHER and SAW . Sadly the producers of HOUSE OF 9 have used BIG BROTHER as their main inspiration rather than SAW which means we're subjected to a bunch of whiny , unlikable foul mouthed non entities who deserve all that's coming to them There's little in the way of plot and little in the way of character development . The cast don't help themselves much either and even Hopper gives an unconvincing performance as an " Oirish " priest who can't even complete a sentence without breaking in to his natural American accent . Director Steve R Monroe seems more interested in to inserting a power ballad sequence than developing Phillipe Vidal's screenplay and the ending where Brook's character ( Who's miraciously survived electrocution ) wins the money only to find herself locked in another vault makes no sense whatsoever