With thousands of fully grown men leaving screenings of Toy Story 3 in tears, it's more apparent than ever that few animated films are created solely with children in mind. But fewer still are conceived entirely for mature audiences, telling stories that are too harrowing for young viewers. Set in a terrifying post-apocalyptic landscape, strewn with human corpses and blood-curdlingly horrific machines, 9 is one such film.
A proposition as unusual as this is only likely to have been greenlit because of the involvement of Tim Burton. Listed here as a producer, any film that bears the Hollywood heavyweight's name is guaranteed to celebrate the macabre - but it would be a mistake to assume that 9 occupies a similar family-friendly territory to Burton's previous animations, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride.
The film begins with the diminutive sack-cloth character called 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) inexplicably coming to life in a long-deserted workshop and quickly discovering that the world he has been born into is an inhospitable one. Our protagonist soon meets another raggedy creature known as 2 (Martin Landau), but loses him just as quickly when the pair are attacked by a dog-like robot beast and his friend is carried away in its jaws. After the shocking experience, 9 discovers a shelter containing several more of his terrified kin - apparently the last "living" things on Earth. Led by the paranoid control freak, 1, (Christopher Plummer), the beings live in perpetual fear of marauding machines, but the brave and kind-hearted 9 demands that a search party be sent out to recover their lost member.
With the help of the meek-but-loyal 5 (John C Reilly) they eventually find him, caged in a deserted building. But during the rescue attempt, the characters inadvertently awaken an intelligence far more dangerous than any they have come across before. With a new foe that is capable of destroying not just them, but the entire world in which they live, 9 must convince his sack-cloth kin that they can no longer continue to run and hide. It falls upon him to teach the others the one thing they need most: to be brave.
Clocking-in at just 76 minutes (including credits) the film is fast-moving by necessity. Unfortunately though, the short running time makes it feel over-stuffed with plot, leading to dialogue that is clunky and exposition-heavy. There's also something incredibly familiar about the film's newcomer-gives-fear-stricken-group-of-survivors-a-reason-to-fight-back premise. Although 9's end-of-the-world landscape is not as visually arresting as Pixar's Wall-E, there's no denying that the artistic design in many parts is stunning. From the tribe of miniature sack-cloth beings to their giant robot adversaries, the film combines Burton's usual gothic flourishes with the vintage science-fiction aesthetic of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. It also boasts several high-action set pieces that are as visually creative as they are exciting.
An oddball movie that doesn't fit comfortably in any particular category, it deserves to become a cult favourite, but many audiences members may feel alienated. While the idea of creating animated worlds for grown-up audiences is an interesting one, 9 only feels mature because of the images it presents us with - not the themes it discusses.