9 Dead (aka Nine Dead) (2010)

After a spate of abductions in LA, all 9 of the masked kidnappers wake up in the same room, each handcuffed to a post.
The kidnapper enters the room, and tells them that they are all here for a reason; he will return every 10 minutes and ask if they know what the reason is. If they do, he will call the police, release them, and make a full confession; if they do not, he will kill one of them, and restart the clock...

---

There have been literally dozens of Saw ripoffs since the original in 2004, most focus on the elaborate traps and gory deaths, rather than the intricate plots; the result is usually guff like Are You Scared, or Captivity (I should probably go back and tag all the reviews in which I manage to find an excuse to diss Captivity; it's a bit if a theme), 9 Dead does something different, focusing entirely on the story, and ditching the elaborate traps and imaginative deaths altogether, every 10 minutes someone is simply shot, usually off screen, and it's a better movie for it.  We loved the traps and gore in the Saw movies, but it was the mystery element that (in the first 4 or 5 at least) kept us coming back for more. 

In Between shootings, it's just an ever decreasing number of people talking, or more often shouting, at each other in real time, like a genre 12 Angry Men, but without such good acting.  

Sadly, the structure means that (once again) there's little I can tell you on the plot line... After the first death around 20 mins into the movie, everything I can tell you is a spoiler. 

The acting is variable, the worst offender being a strip-club owning mobster, who's acting will make you hope that his death is an early one, just do you don't have to put up with him chewing scenery; obviously in a film that is literally about a group of people standing around talking, bad acting is a real problem, and this guy is a Baltimore accent away from a roll in an early John Waters movie!

Acting as side, the characterisations, if a little underdeveloped, are mostly okay... with the exception of one, offensive, walking stereotype; an effeminate guy who uses his best "gay voice" throughout his time in the movie, gets off on the predicament that they are in (he strokes his nipples through his shirt as soon as he realised what is going on) and tells us almost right off the bat that he's a child rapist. That said, he is responsible for my new favorite dark humor exchange (TRIGGER WARNING: "[did you rape] boys or girls?", someone asks him, "does it make a difference to you?", "I suppose not", "not to me either").

There is one more problem with the casting... Melissa Joan Heart (Clarissa, Sabrina). It's not that she's a bad actress that's the problem; it's that she's a known in a cast of unknowns; never a good idea in a movie in which all characters are supposed to be in a similar level of danger...

The puzzle they have to solve, the matter of why they find themselves chained to posts in a basement, is an interesting one, and the clues are doled out to us at a perfect pace, fast enough that I was able to work it out before the characters, but not so fast that it was obvious ages before the reveal, leaving me wishing that the remaining cast would catch up.

As is common with these things, it turns out that there are a couple if details (and by extension, kidnapping victims) that the villein couldn't possibly have known, but the movie was otherwise so compelling that I'm prepared to overlook this.

I know I'm only one week in, but this is by far the best movie I've seen this month.