What’s It About
Will is an arbiter who judges souls before they inhabit bodies in the living. He lives in an isolated house in the middle of a desert-scape, interviewing candidate souls for the opportunity to be born; if they are not selected, Will gives them a parting memory before their existence is erased. His only company is Kyo, a soul who did not disappear, and has since assisted in Will’s interviews. Will spends his days watching and taking notes on a multitude of television screens, each displaying the life of a different individual that Will has previously selected.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
You can always tell when a director makes their first big film. Suddenly everything they learned in film school is front and center on the big screen. Is the scenery right? Is it in focus? Are the costumes ok? These are some of the questions newbies stress over. They stress so much, the film they finally create looks more like their final exam. That’s the main problem with Nine Days. It’s Edson Oda’s directorial debut, and it shows. Like most new directors, they tend to over-stylize and accentuate things only another director would ever care about. So what about the moviegoer? The story is somewhat simple. Will (Winston Duke) is in charge of giving an unborn soul life. Candidates arrive and are interviewed and tested for a maximum of nine days. At the end of the process, one entity will get the pleasure of being born. Basically, it’s an adult version of Disney’s Soul with all the fun and exciting stuff taken out. We are supposed to sit through lackluster performances and drab dialog with subplots that never go anywhere. Winston’s character creates a whole level of questions by himself, as he was once alive and now judge and jury at the center of several plots. The other character with multiple stories is Emma (Zazie Beetz). If you’ve seen Soul, Emma would be the unborn soul 22. Then there’s Benedict Wong’s Kyo. He was Will’s assistant and voice of reason. Kyo was a soul that never vanished after the nine-day interview. Nine Days has a very interesting premise, and with the right writers, producers, and directors, it could have been a great movie. But as it is, Edson Oda had good intentions, and we all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So what the hell was Edson thinking?
OUR RATING – A SOULLESS 3
MEDIA
- Genre – Drama
- Street date
- Digital/DVD/Blu-Ray – November 2nd, 2021
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2.39:1
- Sound – English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
- Subtitles – English SDH, Spanish, French
Extras
- The Making of Nine Days – Featurette