“Nine Days” takes a ludicrous premise and plays it straight.
Writer-director Edson Oda’s innovative drama revolves around the tireless plight of Will (Winston Duke), a jaded middle-manager trapped in a purgatorial cycle of interviewing souls for the opportunity of life.
Oda’s script is rich with bold ideas, beginning with the surreal notion of entire lives unfolding through VHS tapes and climaxes with a hyperbolic recitation of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” It’s an enchanting fantasy bookended with genuine emotional beats.
Somewhere in between them, however, it settles into a dreary slog bogged down by repetitive existential blather over the course of two hours, as if enmeshed in a soul-searching journey of its own..
The opening act has a striking immersive quality as the purgatorial setting gradually comes together.
Spending tireless hours in a dimly-lit house surrounded by emptiness in every direction, Will watches the lives of
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