Review of House of 9 (2005) by Tony L — 05 Sep 2010

Coming up with an interesting and original premise is quite rare in horror films of recent times as we are usually bombarded with sequels and unoriginal clones. House of 9 is a film that sounds interesting and it certainly has its fair share of originality but it somehow manages to turn an excellent premise into an incredibly mundane and annoying film.

It's actually a simple enough plot which makes it all the more frustrating that they managed to get it so wrong. Nine people of various backgrounds are kidnapped and placed within a mansion with no means of escape. They are told that they're part of a game where there will be only one winner and that winner will receive $5m. The catch is that to win you must be the only surviving member of the nine people.

Now this simple premise opens up all manner of possibilities to explore the darker side of human nature and just how far someone will go to become a millionaire or to simply survive. Instead we are given an incredibly slow moving film where close to nothing happens for the first 50 minutes. The house is populated by incredibly annoying characters, none more so than Dennis Hopper as an Irish priest with a laughably bad accent and truly terrible acting. By the time the killing starts you will have lost all interest in the characters and therefore couldn't care less who lives or dies. There are some decent gore effects and admittedly the pace does pick up in the last half hour but it's nowhere near enough to make up for the previous 50 minutes.

House of 9 is proof that coming up with an interesting premise is only half the battle, actually fleshing that premise out into a full length film is the hard part. Far too slow moving with some terrible acting and annoying characters make this a film to avoid.