The Ninth Gate (1999) Review

 

The Ninth Gate (1999)

The Ninth Gate follows rare book curator Dean Corso who is tasked to track down the remaining 2 copies of the The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows in order to open the ninth gate and venture into Hell itself.

This is a movie that had a lot of promise because it very well could have been the next Omen. Sadly though, that isn’t the case. What we get is a sometimes very exciting, but otherwise long and slow paced thriller with too many moving parts and questions posed without answers to make much sense. It takes the dark looming quality of the possibility of a book written by Satan himself and as the secrets of the film unravel, goes from really interesting, to bland by having Mrs. Telfer only want the book for her weird satanic sex orgies and Balkan using Corso for practically no reason. Corso’s journey however does take him down some really neat routes, just wish they had been more fleshed out without that goofy succubus by his side most of the time.

That said, I really, really liked Balkan as the overarching villain of this, with it being explained that he is the one who killed all of those that Corso crosses paths with, destroying their copies of the book in the process. His unceremonious death and failure was poorly executed though and made Corso’s ending feel really cheap.

We get fairly good cast here, starring Lena Olin, Frank Langella, Emannuelle Seigner, and Johnny Depp. Depp is one of the more grounded and very watchable aspects of this movie, being a good vessel for the events of the film. Seigner is undoubtedly the weakest link though and her inclusion feels weird and out of place. Langella as Balkan, like I said, is also a terrific antagonist in a Donovan from Last Crusade sort of way but much more menacing.

The Ninth Gate, directed by Roman Polanski (and the first I’ve ever actually seen from him), is a movie with a terrifying and darkly fascinating concept, but falls somewhat short on delivering in any grand fashion, leading to a slow buildup with no reward for the satanic thriller based off the book by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

6.9/10