9 (2019 film)

9 (or Nine) is a 2019 Indian Malayalam-language supernatural horror thriller film film written and directed by Jenuse Mohamed.[1] It was jointly produced by Prithviraj Productions and SPE Films India (Sony Pictures India), and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film stars Prithviraj Sukumaran in the lead role, with Prakash Raj, Mamta Mohandas, Wamiqa Gabbi, and Master Alok in other important roles. The film marks the first regional Indian film production and distribution of Sony Pictures and the debut of Prithviraj Productions.[2]

9
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJenuse Mohamed
Produced bySupriya Menon
Written byJenuse Mohamed
Starring
Music byScore:
Sekhar Menon
Songs:
Shaan Rahman
CinematographyAbinandhan Ramanujam
Edited byShameer Muhammed
Production
company
Prithviraj Productions
SPE Films India
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release date
  • 7 February 2019 (2019-02-07)
Running time
148 minutes
CountryIndia
LanguageMalayalam

In the film, a global crisis arises when a comet passes very close to the Earth for 9 days. The film explores Albert Lewis and his son Adam's lives, as a direct result of the comet. 9 was released in India and Gulf Cooperation Council territories on 7 February 2019.

Plot

Dr. Albert Lewis is a widowed astrophysicist living in Kerala with his 8-year old son Adam. He is emotionally distant with his son whom he silently believes to be the reason he lost his beloved wife Annie (Mamta Mohandas) who died in childbirth. His only other kin Annie's brother is hostile with Albert and Adam as he feels Adam is evil and is the cause of a freak accident that rendered his son paralysed while he and Adam were playing on terrace. Adam is shown to be a gloomy but seemingly perceptive boy. He is shown to have run into trouble with school authorities several times and Albert is irked by this too.

A comet from an unknown galaxy is projected to pass beside Earth which will cause a huge electromagnetic pulse (EMP) surge and is predicted to be lasting nine days, during which time none of the modern inventions including electricity, phone, engine-run vehicles will work anywhere in the world. Several days before this phenomenon, Albert's mentor Dr. Inayat Khan (Prakash Raj) visits him at his apartment and asks him to conduct research about the comet and sends him to a place in the Himalayas, from where the closest citing of the comet is expected. Inayat also says to Albert that this incident is long portrayed by the locals over there and their caves have drawing of the comet with its earlier and future occurrences. Albert, with his colleagues and son, goes to the Himalayas for the research and Albert and Adam opts to stay at an old bungalow owned by Dr.Inayat with Hakka, an old janitor from the local tribe to assist them.

On the day of falling of the comet, Albert goes around exploring some places to find a perfect spot for citing. In the evening, the comet falls, displaying a red streak on the sky. Awestruck by this phenomenon, Albert turns around to return to bungalow, but is chased by a wolf, and while running away from it, a woman runs into him and falls down unconscious. He brings her home and discovers a burning piece of something in her bag, which Adam thinks could be a piece of the comet. In the morning, the woman wakes up and introduces herself as Eva, who had come to see the comet but got lost among the woods. Adam asks her to take rest and leaves to meet his colleagues. Adam gets friendly with her. Though Hakka is suspicious, Eva, as a guest, lingers around Albert. Adam finds out that there is something peculiar about Eva. It appears that Eva is some kind of an extraterrestrial entity that came along with the comet. Unbeknownst to Albert, Eva sheds her friendly nature and starts to terrorise Adam in the nights. Adam tries to communicate this to Albert, but he brushes them off as Adam's irrational fears.

Meanwhile, Albert meets with monks of the monastery in the locality to understand the comet more. Eva is shown to be not entering the monastery premises even though Albert calls her along.

Adam tries to communicate about Eva to Divya, a colleague of Albert's, but Divya is pushed off a pedestal by Eva and falls into coma before she could communicate about Eva to Adam. That night Eva chases Adam inside the bungalow and tries to strangle him. Hakka witnesses this. Eva follows Hakka as he runs away and causes an accident rendering him unconscious and bedridden. All this all happens unbeknownst to Albert. Adam tries to communicate the facts he knows about Eva to Albert. But Albert does not believe any of it and considers it to be pretext of some repressed fear of Adam.

Eventually on one night, Annie appears before Albert and coyly subdues him and asks Albert to hand Adam over to her as he is the one who ended up splitting them two. Albert prevails and pushes away Annie to discover it was Eva and Albert realises the truth in what Adam had been saying all along. He runs to save Adam. They drive away from the bungalow to move away from Eva and any potential harm. Albert hands over Adam to his colleague Sandeep and goes back to the bungalow to confront Eva and put an end to all of this. However, he does not find her there. As night approaches, Adam suggest to Sandeep to take him to the monastery. En route, Sandeep is attacked by Eva and Adam runs into the forest and seeks refuge amongst the local tribe of Hakka whose premises are protected by enchantments. In the night Albert comes and takes Adam with him and Adam wakes just in time to run away from danger. Albert follows but is knocked out by Eva.

Albert wakes up next morning in the bungalow meeting Inayat sitting next to him, who tells him that Eva was an illusion, a version of his own self who dislikes his son and Albert is suffering from dissociative identity disorder. Inayat tells him that it was Albert itself who was initially friendly to Adam but started to terrorise him later in the bungalow, Albert itself who pushed Divya into coma, Hakka into the accident, attacked Sandeep, and took away Adam from the tribe's premises the previous night. Inayat asks whereabouts about Adam who is missing and tells Albert that only Albert can know where Adam could be. Albert attempts to find where his son is and approaches the monastery, they ask him to retrace back through his memories because there is time. Night falls and Albert retracing the footsteps from the night before ends up in the forest where he first saw the comet, and is confronted by the wolf which he saw on the first the wolf which chased him before. This time, instead of running away, he stays on, mustering all the courage in him. The wolf turns away and runs away and Eva comes there. After Albert pleads with her to show him his son and conversing with her in terms of his love to Adam, she transfigures into Annie and points him to a direction. Albert follows and reaches at a small cave blocked by a big rock. He opens it and finds Adam there alone and safe, and he is happy and moved to tears. Albert reconciles with Adam and both of them look at the sky as the red streak slowly disappears and the lights in the valley start to come alive, indicating that the 9-day electromagnetic field of the comet has been lifted. Albert, unable to process the strange happenings, asks Adam whether Eva was real or not. Adam looks at Albert and the screen fades before he answers.

During the end credits, the inside of the cave where Albert found Adam is shown. Inside the cave there are paintings made by the tribes that Dr.Inayat mentioned- of the last comet arrival depicting the incidents that happened 2000 years ago, which includes the tribe being confronted by a wolf, and a depiction of a fiery-eyed woman arising from fire, resembling the Eva which was shown to us. The camera focuses on this painting and leaves the people to deduce whether Eva is real or a symbol of darkness within Albert and whether mentally fragile people in the tribe were affected in a very similar way by the last comet.

Cast

Production

Development

On 6 November 2016, The Times of India reported that Jenuse Mohamed is set to direct an untitled science fiction horror thriller film written by himself, with Prithviraj Sukumaran signed to play the lead role. Confirming the project to the news-daily, Mohamed said that they are hoping to start filming after March 2017 and the film will be mostly shot in Himachal Pradesh and in Kerala for the remaining portion, also adding Parvathy and Nithya Menen would be acting beside Prithviraj (both later replaced).[8] In March 2018, Prithviraj announced that the film, titled 9, will be jointly produced by his newly formed production house Prithviraj Productions in partnership with Sony Pictures. The film was reportedly scheduled to begin filming in the following month.[9][10] 9 marks the debut of Prithviraj Productions and the first regional Indian film of Sony Pictures.[11]

Jenuse wrote the complete screenplay of 9 within a week.[12] He approached Prithviraj in 2016.[13] Prithviraj initially signed the film as an actor and producing the film was not in his mind, but later when he decided to launch a production house with his wife Supriya Menon, they chose 9 as their debut production. Its pre-production began in 2017.[14]

Filming

Principal photography began on 9 April 2018 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.[15][16] Filming also took place in Kochi.[17] Shooting schedule in Kerala was completed on 18 April.[18] Final scenes in this schedule was shot at Kuttikkanam hill station in Idukki district.[19] Abinandhan Ramanujam was the cinematographer. High precision movie camera was required for filming as almost 60 percent of the film was to be shot at night. Beginning from its second schedule in Manali, Himachal Pradesh, the Red Digital Cinema Gemini 5K camera was used for filming, in its debut use in Indian cinema.[20] The team completed shooting in Spiti Valley by June 2018.[21] Filming was wrapped in Delhi where a song sequence was shot. Principal photography was completed in 48 days. Major part of filming took place in Manali and Spiti Valley. It took more than six months for post-production.[17] Production of the film was completed at a cost lower than the estimated budget.[14]

Soundtrack

The film features background score composed by Sekhar Menon and two songs composed by Shaan Rahman. It was released by Sony Music.

9 (Nine)
No.TitleWriter(s)Singer(s)Length
1."Akale"B. K. Harinarayanan, Preeti NambiarHarib Hussain, Anne Amie 
2."Vicharamo"B. K. HarinarayananAnne Amie 

Release

9 was released in India and Gulf Cooperation Council territories on 7 February 2019 by Sony Pictures Releasing.[22]

gollark: I know someone who uses a bunch of virtualization stuff, but I do containers.
gollark: Maybe Proxmox? I hear that exists.
gollark: Well, hardware encoding is generally worse quality than software, but fast it is.
gollark: My laptop's amazingly powerful™ intel iGPU™ can do hardware VP9 encoding *and* decoding.
gollark: Yep!

References
  1. "Prithviraj's 9 a sci-fi horror thriller?". The Times of India.
  2. "Prithviraj takes big steps, announces collaboration with Sony Pictures". Onmanorama.
  3. "Prithviraj in Jenuse's 9". Deccan Chronicle.
  4. "Godha heroine to return to Malayalam alongside Prithviraj". Mathrubhumi.
  5. "Tony Luke plays a geek scientist in Prithviraj's Nine". Times Of India.
  6. "Tony Luke in Prithviraj movie Nine 9 after Pranav Mohanlal Aadhi Movie". Mathrubhumi.
  7. "Movie Nine 9 trailer released". IBTimes.
  8. Sidhardhan, Sanjith (6 November 2016). "Jenuse Mohamed ropes in Prithviraj for a sci-fi movie". The Times of India. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  9. Kumar, Karthik (23 March 2018). "Prithviraj's maiden production titled Nine, first look poster released". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  10. R., Manoj Kumar (23 March 2018). "First look of Prithviraj's 9 unveiled, see photo". The Indian Express. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  11. "Sony Pictures collaborates with Prithviraj for its first Malayalam film". Business Standard. Press Trust of India. 16 March 2018. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  12. Nagarajan, Saraswathy (6 February 2019). "Any film will only work with a human story, says director Jenuse Mohamed". The Hindu. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  13. "Prithviraj, the producer, talks about 'Nine'". The Times of India. 30 January 2019. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  14. Shrijith, Sajin (6 February 2019). "Interview | Supriya Menon Prithviraj on turning producer with '9', motherhood and more". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  15. Sidhardhan, Sanjith (10 April 2018). "Prithviraj's driver and make-up man kick off the actor's latest venture". The Times of India. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
  16. "Prithviraj's maiden production Nine goes on floors". Cinema Express.
  17. Shrijith, Sajin (22 January 2019). "Prithviraj-starrer 9 is best experienced on the big screen: Jenuse Mohamed". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  18. "Prithviraj's 'Nine' heads to Himalayan foothills for shoot". The News Minute. 20 April 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
  19. "Shooting of Prithviraj's 'Nine' will resume in Himalayas". The Times of India. Times News Network. 19 April 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
  20. Manu, Meera (25 April 2018). "A keen eye for cinematography". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
  21. Digital Native (11 June 2018). "Shooting for Prithviraj's 'Nine' wrapped up in the Himalayas". The News Minute. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  22. "Prithviraj's Nine to hit theatres on Feb 7". The New Indian Express. 5 November 2018. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
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