By Emilio Frenk
Director: Alexander Aja
Cast: Jamie Dornan, Sarah Gadon, Aiden Longworth, Julian Wadham, Molly Parker, Oliver Platt, Barbara Hershey and Aaron Paul.
Rating: Poor.
Another thriller hit the theaters this week and it was “The 9th Life of Louis Drax”. This is one of the worst movies I’ve seen of this year.
The movie starts with a young boy named Louis Drax (Aiden Longworth) who in his 9th birthday suffers a major accident that leads him to coma.
This brings the attention of Dr. Allan Pascal (Jamie Dornan) a coma pediatrician who follows the case of Louis and tries to find out all the nature of the cause of Louise’s accident.
This will lead him in the search of the boundaries between fantasy and reality hoping he can get answers of the accident.
The major problem that “The 9th of Louis Drax” had was the excess use of flashbacks and the voice over of the boy that never worked.
I give credit that the movie is visually striking but the rest of the movie is just a huge mess. In addition the movie had an ambitious cast with actors like Aaron Paul, Oliver Platt and Barbara Hershey but the performances they give were never real.
The performance of Aiden Longworth, who played Louis Drax was badly casted and I just couldn’t take it anymore because he was annoying from the minute the movie started from the last.
The script written by Max Linghella, who’s work is more notable as an actor in movies like “The Social Network” and “The Ides of March” was very poor written. I understand it’s his debut as a writer and like other cases that I have mentioned in this space hopefully this will be a learning experience for him.
Jamie Dornan who is well known for portraying Christian Grey in “Fifty Shades of Grey” did an ok job but for moments I was still watching the same performance he did on Fifty Shades. I think he can be a great actor but he needs the right guidance and direction.
The movie had very good elements of being a good thriller but again the excessive use of flashbacks and the voice over never worked.
The use of voice over has to be when you’re character is not present at any circumstance. Here the problem is that he narrates every event that led to the accident which were accidents as well.
The writer could have just written the action and that we already knew what’s going on.
The directing by Alexander Aja was not executed correctly and I’m going to say something that is very harsh but this is an example of filmmaking has not to be. It has to clear from the beginning to end.
The movie was all over the place and the addition of characters that were in the boys imagination were not necessary and they are everything but compelling.
With that being sayed “The 9th Life of Louis Drax” is a huge disappointment and it’s boring from the beginning to end.