Movie Review: 9 Days

The movie kicked off with a scene that triggered my childhood trauma so that immediately wasn't great.

We are then with this "teenage" girl Danielle as she tries to hitchhike to her friend's house. A squirrel-y man named Virgil pulls up and offers her a ride and of course he's a total weirdo. He asks a ton of questions and she's not even in the car yet. For some reason I will never understand, now she's at his house. Why are you at his house????

He makes her rabbit for dinner while there is a pig carcass sitting underneath the dishtowel on the counter. He's also got a severed head in the fridge. Why are you at his house????

He grew up in the house with his mom, who is now dead. He's a poet.

We take a five minute detour into the bathroom where she undresses, jumps in the shower, jumps out of the shower, checks the door, locks the door, and gets back into the shower.

He chloroforms her. "Nobody saw that coming," I say, dripping with sarcasm. He carries her down into the basement, where he lays her on a tarp and ropes a chain around the wooden support beam. She comes to and he knocks her back out. She wakes up again, but now she's chained to the post.

Apparently he's insane - it runs in the family - and has been making people ready for God for a while now. He has them "fill up" with sin and "purge" of the good. She tries to seduce him, but that doesn't work.

A girl uncuffs Danielle and proceeds to attack her while he watches. The girls fight, or really just punch air at each other. Virgil brings Danielle a hamburger and water bottle full of vodka. I guess she's not a big fan of alcohol because she refuses to drink it. He plugs her nose and forces her to drink it. I personally like vodka - maybe a bit too much - so if my torturer offered me a way to dull whatever was about to happen to me, I'd jump on that.

We just see him sewing up a wound on her back, but aren't told why. Oh, wait. We find out in the next scene that he put an electric thingy in her back and every time he hits the little red button on his remote, she gets zapped. He makes her stand in a cross shape, holding two buckets of wood. He sits in the corner and watches the whole time, occasionally making adjustments. She drops them and he zaps her. "It puts the wood in the buckets, or it gets the shock again." After giving her a pep talk, he has her lift the buckets again. She drops them again.

He sets up a camera as she's not chained up anymore. "This relays straight to my house so if you do something stupid, I'm going to have to do something stupider." Oh, Virgil.

He fills a tub, but she hesitates to strip in front of him. He kindly baths her, with what looks like dish soap. And then he asks her how long she can hold her breath. He dunks her under the water and every time he lets her up, he says, "Let it happen." After a while, she asks him to do it again.

Danielle's mom and step-dad are looking for her. Virgil instantly dislikes the step-dad as Danielle told him that he'd been the one abusing her.

He brings out a Bunson burner type thing and at first you're like, "Dude, what's about to happen?" And then he offers her the stick and some marshmallows. They make smores as he tells her about the weird dream he'd had that night. He takes the marshmallow stick and burns nine tallies into her leg.

On the seventh day, he takes the batteries out of the shocker. He's done something for her, now she has to do something for him. It's her turn to be the aggressor. She's tasked with attacking a girl chained to a post outside. He tells her how proud he is and they flog themselves together. Virgil tells her he thinks he's in love. He fills the tub with ice. As she lies in it, he binds her ankles to a cinder block and handcuffs her to the tub. "For what it's worth, I hope you don't get hypothermia and die." She starts to struggle with the plight she's in. Shivering, lips turning purple and her eye shadow too. Her eyes start to roll back in her head.

He comes back to check on her and she's alive. She wakes up in a bed with her old clothes on. She rummages through his kitchen to find a killing instrument. The bloody knife for some reason has to be looked at a few times. She attacks him with the knife but he bests her, until his head is bashed with a hammer. She chains him to the post and proceeds to go to town on him.

Quite honestly, Virgil was great. I loved him. Danielle was good too, but he really sold this movie for me.

"When I say I'm going to hurt you, I'll hurt. When I say I'm not going to hurt you, I won't hurt you. Simple as that."

Moral of this movie: (And every other movie) Hitchhiking is bad. Don't do it.