Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

The 9th Life of Louis Drax Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 5, 2017

The 9th Life of Louis Drax is one of those purported mysteries where devoted armchair sleuths are probably going to be asking, “Well, it can’t be that obvious, can it?”, only to have the denouement of the film prove that yes, indeed, it can in fact be that obvious. The film has a generally intriguing presentational style, and a really winning performance by young Aiden Longworth as the titular Louis Drax, but the “mystery” as to what’s going on with a perhaps deeply troubled little boy will be patently obvious to anyone who has ever dealt with or even read about psychological issues between parents and their children. The film is pretty relentlessly narrated by Louis, even after he falls into a coma, not to mention having been pronounced dead and taken to the morgue where he’s about to undergo a postmortem before sputtering back to intermittent breathing. Louis’ life has been, to borrow a certain Lemony Snicket title, A Series of Unfortunate Events, one calamitous accident after another that began with a breech birth, moved on to a chandelier falling squarely on his baby crib, and continued through bouts of food poisoning, broken bones, electrocution and various and sundried other mishaps. Already certain armchair sleuths may be suspecting something other than bad luck is at play, and while a real attempt at not posting spoilers will be made here, for those whose suspicions are already piqued, it may be best to not even read further, since (as alluded to above) that old truism about Occam’s Razor turns out to be, well, true, for The 9th Life of Louis Drax.

There is a certain dreamlike quality to large segments of this film, perhaps appropriate given the fact that little Louis is comatose for large portions of it. Director Alexandre Aja (Mirrors) evidently has a thing for so-called “supernatural horror” stories, but The 9th Life of Louis Drax is really more of a (supposed) mystery wrapped inside a tale of family dysfunction. There are a number of arresting images scattered throughout the film, probably none more shocking than a slow motion view of Louis hurtling over the edge of a cliff as he calmly narrates his history of misadventures.

Through a series of segues and flashbacks, Louis’ story is slowly unfurled, including the fact that he’s slowly become aware that his mother Natalie (Sarah Gadon) is on emotional tenterhooks, worrying about what might happen next to her extremely unlucky son. Louis seems to have a more stable relationship with his father Peter (Aaron Paul), but in one of the film’s peculiar and not very convincing attempts at misdirection, Peter is suspected of having pushed Louis off that cliff, something that in turn has led to the little boy’s coma. With Peter missing since the incident, his apparent villainy seems to be all the more certain, which of course means that armchair sleuths everywhere are going to be looking for another likely suspect (hint: they won’t have to look all that far).

A dashing pediatric coma specialist named Pascal (Jamie Dornan) is brought in to evaluate Louis in his persistent vegetative state, and it probably goes without saying that romantic sparks fly between him and Natalie, despite the fact that the good doctor is in fact married. Wending through all of these subplots is a through line involving a therapist named Dr. Perez (Oliver Pratt) whom Louis had been seeing for some time before his “accident”. These scenes actually bristle with some effective energy, for Louis is one smart little boy and does not suffer psychiatric fools gladly. The interchanges between Perez and Louis are in many ways the scabrous highlights of the film.

As if all this trauma isn’t enough, Louis is haunted by a boogie man of sorts who kind of looks like a mutant pile of kale (now that’s scary). This monster in the closet and/or under the bed wafts through several scenes with the young boy, until a late denouement which actually turns out to be surprisingly touching. Even with the several strands of this overstuffed plot being at least cursorily detailed in this review, there are a number of other elements at play, especially considering Peter’s past, something that may indicate that screenwriter Max Minghella found it a challenge to winnow down Liz Jensen’s source novel.

While the “mystery” is pretty much a nonstarter here, the actual family dynamics between Natalie, Peter and Louis are often quite compelling and handled well by a committed cast. The whole coma angle allows Aja to get into an almost magical realist ambience at times that is quite interesting if never completely dramatically cogent. A climax featuring a bunch of scientific hoohah, including quasi-hypnotism linked with a kind of Star Trek-esque mind meld, is patently ridiculous, especially with Dornan attempting to mimic Longworth’s unusual speech patterns. Longworth, who looks considerably younger than his 12 years, is a real standout here and manages some difficult scenes with a lot of nuance.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf was apparently even less impressed with The 9th Life of Louis Drax than I was. You can read Brian's thoughts about the film here.

The 9th Life of Louis Drax Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The 9th Life of Louis Drax is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. This is yet another film where technical data is in short supply online, but this appears to be digitally shot and boasts a generally extremely well detailed image. That said, there's perhaps a higher incidence of SFX work than in a typical mystery film, including some greenscreen material, where backgrounds at least can look pretty soft. The palette hasn't been overly graded, though there are occasional trips down the by now rote "yellow brick road", so to speak, with some scenes drenched in a buttery hue that tends to smooth out fine detail. Several interior scenes in darker environments don't offer a wealth of shadow detail. In better lighting and without any overt color grading, detail levels are uniformly quite pleasing. Commendably, despite the prevalence of water imagery, and a number of scenes with light wafting through the liquid, there really aren't any issues with banding.

The 9th Life of Louis Drax Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 9th Life of Louis Drax's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track offers some good immersion in a number of crowded scenes, as in Louis' trip to Sea World with Peter. There's also some really good differentiation in ambient reverb as the film ventures between the coma ward where Louis is kept after the accident and several outdoor scenes (either "contemporary" or flashback material). Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented, though young Longworth has a tendency to swallow a syllable here and there.

The 9th Life of Louis Drax Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making of Featurette (1080p; 2:46) is a brief EPK that is little more than a glorified trailer with a few interstitial interviews thrown in for good measure.

The 9th Life of Louis Drax Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The 9th Life of Louis Drax features an extremely charismatic cast, but it tips into turgid soap operatic territory at the same time it's trying to be some kind of thriller or mystery, all with a kind of supernatural edge lying just beneath the (watery?) surface. Fans of the cast may enjoy their participation enough to want to check this out, and for them the good news is technical merits are generally very strong.