The Ninth Gate (5 Stars)

This should have been my horror film #13 for October, but it looks like I got my genres mixed up. On watching again I realised that it's not a horror, it's a supernatural thriller. Nevertheless, it's one of my favorite ever films, so it was worth watching again. And writing about.

I was fortunate enough to see this film in the cinema when it was first released in 2000. It was the film that first made me appreciate Johnny Depp as an actor. Depp plays Dean Corso, a shady book dealer in New York. Within the first five minutes we see examples of his devious business tricks and we hate him already. Corso is hired by millionaire book collector Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to track down copies of a rare book called "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows". Only three copies are known still to exist. Balkan has one copy, but he suspects the other two are fakes, so he lends Corso his copy to compare with the other two which are currently in Portugal and France.

So far it sounds dull, doesn't it? Corso himself thinks of this as a routine job, until people around him are killed and his own life is threatened in an attempt to steal the book. A mystery woman follows him from America to Europe, protecting him from harm. At first he thinks she has been hired by Balkan, but he soon discovers that she has her own agenda.

Other reviewers compare this film with "Rosemary's Baby". I don't really see why. Both films were directed by Roman Polanski, and both films deal with the supernatural, but that's where the similarity ends. Whereas the supernatural element is blatant in "Rosemary's Baby", in "The Ninth Gate" it isn't until close to the end of the film that we find out that supernatural powers really are at work, they're not just the imagination of Balkan and the other book collectors.

It was a brave move by Polanski to make the film's main character someone unpleasant. Johnny Depp plays the role of the anti-hero to perfection. Early on he's jokingly referred to as a "book detective", but this is what he is in the film. He's like the detective in film noir movies, but he's not investigating a murder, he's investigating books.

Click here to view the trailer.