A 2005 Psychological Thriller
Thursday, December 5, 2024
House of 9, a 2005 British psychological thriller, involves nine people who have been abducted and placed inside a house. It is similar to the escape room movies, but there are no riddles to solve. Each of these nine people are very different, often clashing with each other because of their differences or issues with one another. They are told that the house is filled with surveillance cameras, and they are being watched 24/7. It appears to be an indoors human hunting game, and the one person who is still alive will win five million dollars. They have to kill each other until one person remains.
There is a cop with a gun, a young black Rapper, a young woman with an ankle monitor tracker, a tennis player/party girl, a priest, a musician and his wife, vegetarian dancer, and a fashion designer. After they get to know each other, they look for ways to escape because no one wants to kill or get killed.
A dumbwaiter often brings them food, and they decide this food should be rationed. They pull names from a hat to decide which two people will room together in each bedroom. The married couple and the priest get their own room, while others choose a roommate. Some have issues with the names they picked. They become frustrated tolerating one another, ensuing petty fights. They sneak around to surprise others with surprise attacks, which reminded me of my cat. They often struggle in these attacks because the attacked person fights back to stay alive. Each day, they wake up to realize someone is dead, whether the person was hanged, shot, electrocuted, hit with something, or other means.
It is a suspenseful movie because the viewer is kept wondering who will be the sole survivor and who will die next and by whom. At the end, the front door opens for the sole survivor, who walks out into the light to see a huge duffle bag, filled with the prize money. After walking back inside, the so-called winner notices different people sitting inside the house, each hugging their duffle bag and there is a scared look on their face. This so-called winner enters to realize that the game hasn’t ended. They were lied to in order to force them to play along. It appears that the winners will now have to play this deadly game together, and none seem to want to because they had suffered enough in the first round.
If there is a part two for this movie, I wonder what will happen next.
Moreover, this movie was a cross between The Breakfast Club, Survivor Reality Show, Escape Room movies, and college students inside their dormitory. But when I was in college, we played with waterguns. It also reminded me of my late cat Gumby, who killed eight mice inside my townhouse, working the nightshift, quietly meditating and waiting for his prey during the quiet, nighttime stillness. But my late cat did a better job killing mice intruders.
