A year ago, 9 dancing girls met at an audition. This year, they receive
mysterious invitations to a Halloween party at an isolated house which all
of them accept. Once there though, while still trying to figure out who
has invited them and why, they receive threats to their lives and, when
watching a video of their audition, are surprised to find a tenth girl on
tape with them, and the tape later also suggests the tenth girl was abused
by someone in some way. The nine girls
spend the night constantly on guard, but nothing happens - but on the next
day, during a stroll through the woods, they are all slaughtered, all but
Mayumi, who comes face to face with the killer, only to find out it's not
the mysteriuos tenth girl but one of them, Miko, her best friend. Turns
out Miko has lost her marbles a year ago and killed the mysterious tenth girl, and
Mayumi has actually witnessed it but obviously repressed the memory.
Ultimately though, Miko
can't bring herself to kill Mayumi, so she kills herself. A
slasher that tries to break away from the typical genre formula - which is
a good thing in itself. However, 9+1 does so by putting the mystery
at the beginning of its story and the murders at the ending - which is pretty much a
bad thing, because without at least one murder to support it, the mystery
part of the film lacks urgency and becomes a tad bland, leaving the
audience with little more than people talking to each other. When the
murders - a regular massacre - finally do occur, they are at least well
done, but that's too little too late to save the film.
|