9 Days

9 Days comes from writer director Samuel M. Jackson and stars Maura Murphy, Chris Schleicher, Simone Fraund, David Alan Graf and Jennifer Lawrence (don't be quick on that last name it is a very "minor" part). Anyway the story is a modern perverse spin on Dante's Inferno that deals in the world of art-house meets torture-porn. To escape her abusive foster home, headstrong 18-year-old Danielle Hitches a Ride with an affable psycho who calls himself Virgil and has an axe to grind against women based on his warped religious beliefs. She realizes she hasn't quite found her knight in shining armor when she awakens half-naked, chained to a post in Virgil's basement. As Virgil, puts Danielle through a sadistic "moral cleansing" of debauched torture sessions that could kill her at any moment, she must choose either to fight back or to become as inhuman and deranged as Virgil himself. What Virgil doesn't know is that Danielle may be more than up to the challenge of his psychotic head games.

9 Days is a pretty decent film that focuses more on character relations and suspenseful drama. Most of the terror involved comes from the surrealistic yet organic setting of the film and the simple fact that a psycho lures young girls to his home and sets out to torture them into a better way of life. In some serial circles this is probably a great "date-movie". Schleicher's Virgil is a fun demented kind of crazy which makes you like his type of sinister sh*t but I found Murphy's Danielle a bit inconvincible in her role. I had to push the fact that she looked more 28 than 18 from my mind to appreciate the character's story. However I never really believed she ever feared for her life or was anything but mildly aroused by her captor. That being said Murphy did give a straight performance and was able to draw enough of the character out for me to enjoy the movie. It is a dark off-beat portrayal that rides heavy on melodrama with some really raw yet minimal violence. Toward the middle of the film I did find myself drifting off in thought but I came back to the story as it neared day nine. That is when the story gets stimulating once more. There is not much of a high intensity to the film instead riding a steady psychological antagony. I saw this film as more of a story about "how to pick up chicks in Hell" anti- romantic drama as opposed to a tense thrilling story of torture and survival.