Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Nine Days Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 21, 2024

There's an age-old question that asks, "who decides who lives and who dies?" Nine Days answers the first half of that question in a film that is fundamentally rooted in the human experience while exploring that experience from several perspectives, both intimate and dethatched, and seeking to not only answer "who lives" but also "why life matters." The film tells a brilliantly simple and accessible, yet extraordinarily complex, story that is far too reaching and deep to adequately describe apart from a lengthier academic work on it, but suffice it to say the film is ripe for exploration, contemplation, and discussion for its intimate and intricate psychological, philosophical, and existential themes.

Will (Winston Duke) is not alive, but he once was. He's alive in a sense, but not in the way that human understand. It's complicated to describe his existence but suffice it to say his job is important: he decides who makes the jump from his realm to the human world. He interviews several candidates over the course of nine days to fill a single vacancy in humanity, getting to know various "individuals" and quizzing them in various moral and ethical dilemmas and challenges, getting to know their preferences and personalities, and deciding who amongst them would be the best "fit" to live a human life. He also keeps tabs on the people he has sent to live as humans by watching first person perspective videos of their lives, which have been recorded onto video cassettes and which play back on a bank of TV monitors or on a movie projector. When one of his favorite humans, Amanda, passes away unexpectedly in an automobile accident, Will and his assistant Kyo (Benedict Wong) interview a handful of replacement candidates, including Mil (David Rysdahl), Maria (Arianna Ortiz), Alexander (Tony Hale), Kane (Bill Skarsgård), and Emma (Zazie Beetz), the latter of whom appears to be the early odds-on favorite despite her somewhat unorthodox approach to the "interview" process.

Nine Days represents a substantial leap beyond the cut-and-paste, vapid, meaningless, and forgettable drivel that is all too commonplace in today's cinemas, exchanging nifty visuals, fast movement, loud music, raunchy jokes, and social agendas with a film that actually challenges the audience to think. To ponder. To contemplate. Radical ideas? No. Radical ideas today? Yes. Here's a film, from a young filmmaker, Edson Oda, who understands the obvious: story matters. Creativity matters. Audience engagement matters. He tackles the age-old question of what it means to live in a whole new way, with complicated existential, philosophical, and sociological questions, dilemmas, and ponderings the driving forces behind the film. The picture tackles complicated, age-old subject matters from a new perspective, and while Nine Days may not bring with it any real, transformative answers, its structure allows audiences the opportunity to start thinking through the complexities, purposes, and yes even meaning of life from fresh angles.

A film such as this demands a quality cast to carry the deep thematic content and sell the serious life analysis, and the actors do indeed carry the film's dramatic weight with ease. While Nine Days is not filled with household, name brand types of actors, there is nevertheless no mistaking that the film is about as perfectly cast as a film can be, with all of the primaries dominating the proceedings with intelligence, emotional connection to the material and to one another, and all perfectly invested in the film's structure and purposes. Winston Duke is nothing less than a revelation as Will, an individual who builds a mild mystique about his character while offering a barrage of emotional connections to characters and the material that sees him respond with little outward emotion but great inward turmoil at several junctures throughout, all the while offering some very impressive moments of high output intensity, particularly during the first round of questioning with his candidates and when playing the role of a villainous interrogator. There's a certain Andre Braugher quality to his work, physically and emotionally and considering his cadence, but he nevertheless brings his own qualities and characteristics to the role. The support cast is lovely, each sinking into parts with effortless depth and accuracy, bringing realism to characters who are not "real" by any standard metric but nevertheless themselves occupy a broad range of human emotions and responses despite not being "human."

Nine Days Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sony brings Nine Days to the Blu-ray format with a good looking, if not fairly ordinary, 1080p transfer. The picture is neither a standout nor a disappointment, existing in that area of showing an image that is of good, but not noteworthy, quality. The digital shoot does show a little noise, black level can fluctuate from perfectly deep to mildly pale and gray, and banding can be an issue in a handful of places (look at the 28:55 and 1:08:18 marks, for example). Otherwise, the image is solid enough, delivering a healthy level of natural clarity and detail that brings all of the necessary life to skin and clothes and the limited environment seen in the film. Colors are adequate, too. The movie is not meant to be a visual powerhouse, and colors are never really explosively vivid, but they do deliver satisfactory depth and accuracy within the film's more limited spectrum. All in all, there's not much here, if anything, that really stands out, but the everything looks good enough within the film's fairly meager visual context.

Nine Days Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There's not a lot to say about the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack, either. The presentation is very solid, especially in the violin strings heard in the early moments. It is one of the standout sonic moments in the film and a nice treat, what with its precise clarity and definition. The sense of accuracy and transparent realism are plainly obvious, along with precision spacing along the front and gentle surround elements. There are no real high points in the track, so the satisfying music serves as much of the praiseworthy content. Light atmosphere holds serve for immersion and clarity, and some shouts hold definition as well. Dialogue is stable, centered, and satisfying from beginning to end.

Nine Days Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Nine Days includes a few extras. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

• The Making of Nine Days (1080p, 10:19): Exploring the narrative themes, inspirations, characters and performances, shooting details, filming the POV footage and the TV sets featured in the film, and more.
• Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:12).
• Previews (1080p): Additional Sony titles.

Nine Days Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Nine Days is not a film that will satisfy audiences raised on junk food cinema, but for those who wish to experience a film that will challenge their perspectives, stretch their minds, and lead to deeper and more meaningful conversations with friends and family, then this is terrific place to go. The film is smart, well-paced, evocative, nicely made, and superbly acted. They really don't make them like this anymore, making this a rare gem in the increasingly barren landscape of cinema originality. Sony's Blu-ray delivers quite good video and audio. Supplements are few in number, but the movie is righty the main star. Highly recommended!