Review: Nine Days

Will (Winston Duke) used to be alive. Now he's a recluse, in a small house on the beach conducting interviews for human souls. If they pass, they get the honor of being born. Aside from his interviewees, only friend and colleague Kyo (Benedict Wong) visits him. 

I had heard a few good things about this film months ago, so I had it saved in my Netflix DVD queue, ready to go whenever it came out. I even saw it as an option on a flight recently, and decided to wait. Now I'm glad I did because I would've been a blubbering mess on that flight.

I was not expecting this movie to hit me so hard emotionally. I cried several times. Not always because I was sad, but because there was so much beauty to be found in this story. It's hard to call it wholly original, when Pixar's Soul was just released last year, but it felt that way. Something happens to Will early on that makes him go on autopilot. He can't see the beauty there is in the world. (Which he gets to watch on a series of TV screens from the past souls he sent on) Emma (Zazie Beets) is one of the souls he's interviewing, and she sees all of it. I loved her and Will together. It's not played like a romance, thankfully. It's deeper than that. Another interviewee, Kane (Bill Skarsgard) focuses on the negativity. Everyone we meet during this film's runtime shows us something different.

My son randomly asked me later in the evening after I finished this; "Where do we go when we die?" We talked about it our theories, but the fact that he asked me this out of the blue after watching a movie where the focus is before we are born was a profound feeling. I watched the characters ask almost child like questions about things in life, and here's my own doing the same. My heart is full.

Recommended: Yes

Grade: A

Memorable Quote: "Congratulations, she looks happy."  - Kyo (Benedict Wong)