Mini Movie Review #51: 9 (2009) (Patreon)

This was like a nostalgia movie commentary/reaction for me. There are only really two movies that impacted me in a terrifying way as a child. This first was the American version of The Ring which I reacted to last year on the channel. 9 was the second.

I watched this in the theatres when I was 8 years old because since it was an animated movie, it must have been for kids right? While it is definitely not an adult horror movie, it is a movie that pushes the boundaries of what could be considered kids or teen horror. There is a lot of death, in fact, the whole movie takes place in a world that is decomposing after a massive war. Human bodies lay on the ground and catch glimpses of the corpses of mothers holding their sons and men dying under the heavy fire of enemy weapons. We see characters we come to know die in honestly very graphic ways and watch as their bodies go limp. We see machines that have designs straight out of the nightmares of every kid that stalk, prey, and kill anything in sight.

The world is grey and lifeless but the animation is spectacular. The level of realism the movie created in 2009 is absurd and I commend this movie for taking a different approach to animation than the Disney or Pixar way. I also commend this movie for existing. It is very, very rare for an animated movie to be this mature, dark, and scary at times, to be released. While it is not a perfect movie at all and does have many flaws, I respect it so much.