As I begin to write this comment, I have nothing jumping to mind as being good about this movie. Perhaps something will come to me, but at the moment I have only negative comments.
This movie has a TV-movie opening followed by a long, slow, drawn-out attempt to show us the characters--who are not interesting in the slightest and most of whom are not even likeable. The first fifteen minutes, which are the most important part of a script, are this stupid, too-fast beginning followed by absolutely nothing interesting, which makes me wonder how on earth this script was sold.
And as the plot unfolds, I wonder even more! It's a tired, boring plot of *SPOILER ALERT* a group of people trapped inside a house with a centuries-old evil spirit killing them off by taking over their bodies--it's been used a thousand times and the only time it's really been pulled off was with "Fallen" (1998). *SPOILER OVER*
Now, the acting was hampered by a lack of character, yes, but was still inadequate. These people absolutely could not decide who they were, it seems. The awesomely talentless Paris Hilton didn't even stand out as bad (and I frankly found her the least attractive woman in the movie) next to the other "actors."
Next up: the music. The music was absolutely terrible. After the shameless pilfering of the "Halloween" theme in the opening, the music was constantly overdone and/or the wrong emotion (for example, many times, it takes on a heroic sounding trumpet theme when there is nothing heroic happening or about to happen). If the music can't heighten the experience, the least it can do is stay out of the way, but it didn't do that here. For the second time in my life (the first being with "Vanilla Sky" (2001)), I found myself being distracted from the movie by how bad the score was.
I do have one almost positive comment now: the direction was not spectacularly bad. It wasn't good, certainly, but it was better than the movie's other elements. The director cannot be blamed fully for terrible actors and a terrible script.
All in all, "Nine Lives" was an absolutely pathetic attempt at a movie--boring and slow despite clocking in under an hour and a half; badly acted; with terrible dialogue; with worthless, unlikeable characters; and one of the worst scores I have ever heard. Don't waste your time with this--you'll need nine lives to survive all the deaths of boredom that you'll suffer.
This movie has a TV-movie opening followed by a long, slow, drawn-out attempt to show us the characters--who are not interesting in the slightest and most of whom are not even likeable. The first fifteen minutes, which are the most important part of a script, are this stupid, too-fast beginning followed by absolutely nothing interesting, which makes me wonder how on earth this script was sold.
And as the plot unfolds, I wonder even more! It's a tired, boring plot of *SPOILER ALERT* a group of people trapped inside a house with a centuries-old evil spirit killing them off by taking over their bodies--it's been used a thousand times and the only time it's really been pulled off was with "Fallen" (1998). *SPOILER OVER*
Now, the acting was hampered by a lack of character, yes, but was still inadequate. These people absolutely could not decide who they were, it seems. The awesomely talentless Paris Hilton didn't even stand out as bad (and I frankly found her the least attractive woman in the movie) next to the other "actors."
Next up: the music. The music was absolutely terrible. After the shameless pilfering of the "Halloween" theme in the opening, the music was constantly overdone and/or the wrong emotion (for example, many times, it takes on a heroic sounding trumpet theme when there is nothing heroic happening or about to happen). If the music can't heighten the experience, the least it can do is stay out of the way, but it didn't do that here. For the second time in my life (the first being with "Vanilla Sky" (2001)), I found myself being distracted from the movie by how bad the score was.
I do have one almost positive comment now: the direction was not spectacularly bad. It wasn't good, certainly, but it was better than the movie's other elements. The director cannot be blamed fully for terrible actors and a terrible script.
All in all, "Nine Lives" was an absolutely pathetic attempt at a movie--boring and slow despite clocking in under an hour and a half; badly acted; with terrible dialogue; with worthless, unlikeable characters; and one of the worst scores I have ever heard. Don't waste your time with this--you'll need nine lives to survive all the deaths of boredom that you'll suffer.