The 9^th Life of Louis Drax

Actor Jamie Dor­nan land­ed on our laps in his role as a buff mil­lion­aire-cum-sado­masochist in Fifty Shades of Grey. In Alexan­dre Aja’s The 9^th Life of Louis Drax, he is on safer ground as a TED-talk­ing neu­rol­o­gist named Dr Pas­cal. Aiden Long­worth co-stars as the luck­less title char­ac­ter who suf­fers a near-fatal fall which opens the por­tal to a per­son­al pur­ga­to­ry where his family’s secrets are read­i­ly revealed.

Switch­ing back and forth between a film noir-like (attempt­ed) mur­der mys­tery and the fan­ta­sy world locat­ed in Louis’ imag­i­na­tion, the film is more of a bound­ary-test­ing project for the direc­tor. Adapt­ed from a 2004 best­seller from Liz Jensen, it miss­es as often as it hits the mark. It’s a super­nat­ur­al psy­cho­log­i­cal tale from a direc­tor whose back cat­a­logue con­sists almost entire­ly of hor­ror. Aja des­per­ate­ly bat­tles with the film’s nec­es­sary tonal shifts, but more often than not, he comes a‑cropper.

Fea­tur­ing over­lap­ping time zones and clash­ing visu­al styles, the film gives lit­tle impres­sion as to whether its mak­er aims to unset­tle, or if he is just drown­ing in his own exper­i­ment. An elab­o­rate pre-title sequence intro­duces the Drax fam­i­ly in all their mid-cen­tu­ry Europhile fash­ion, but promis­es of ham­ster dynas­ties and red checked pic­nic blan­kets are reneged as the steely-grey world of Pas­cal takes hold. The break­ing open of this self-con­tained uni­verse, begin­ning with the acci­dent, marks the first of many twists pulled straight from Aja’s jump scare com­fort zone.

Louis rec­ol­lects René Magritte’s paint­ed mem­o­ries (going to the aquar­i­um, con­fet­ti laden wed­dings, vis­it­ing his child psy­chol­o­gist), and tries too hard to rep­re­sent his life as a pic­ture-per­fect post­card – the plot itself is much dark­er. But maybe that’s the point? Regard­less, Aja’s over­load­ing of ideas deliv­ers a film that’s an unfor­tu­nate hybrid of Nan­ny McPhee and Psycho.

Based on the debut screen­play from Max Minghel­la, shelved by his late Acad­e­my Award-win­ning father Antho­ny, it’s most charm­ing moments are found in off-guard, off-colour humour: cue Louis excit­ed­ly ques­tion­ing whether he’s a ​“typ­i­cal dis­turbed child”. Still, such whim­si­cal ele­ments are dulled by a blur­ring of two emerg­ing dystopias, espe­cial­ly as an unsus­pect­ing manip­u­la­tor is pushed to the fore. It sells charm and mag­ic but serves some­thing more gris­ly. If it wasn’t for Aaron Paul’s gen­uine­ly affect­ing per­for­mance as a sen­si­tive patri­arch, this pecu­liar film would be lost in a mire of drab confusion.