This is an indie flick that you’ll either love or find impenetrable. I’m in the later camp… I appreciate what it was doing but I just couldn’t find an entry that would allow me really enjoy it. I came away unsure what it was ultimately all about and what it was really trying to say.

Nine Days is about a (presumably) metaphorical pre-life (?) where a man watches a series of old tube TVs, recording the content on VHS and taking notes. On each screen is the first person view of someone’s life from birth. Early on in the film, he brings in a bunch of newborn adults (who are not yet alive) to interview. They have up to nine days of observing the other lives on the TVs while he watches them and decides if they should be born as real humans or if they should cease to exist.

OK… so a heady, cerebral indie film set in a single location that discusses the nature of humanity. I get that on a broad level. I get that for two full hours where not a lot actually happens. It’s a pretty quiet movie, focusing on acting and writing… but I couldn’t get into the writing so it doesn’t matter how good the characters and actors are. I just bounced off the movie.

And yet I wasn’t uninterested and I wasn’t exactly bored. I was often distracted and was left wondering what they could possibly do for the next hour or half hour or forty-five minutes. There are moment of human beauty in the film… mainly when a person was being let go… and that I appreciated. But that was also the most obvious thing in the movie so no points to my brain for figuring that one out.

No, this just didn’t work for me but I do acknowledge there’s quality here. And there’s a pretty good chance someone else will really dig this film’s dirt.

Score: 72