Film Review – The 9th Life of Louis Drax

As a director, Alexandre Aja has built a career on scares, emerging as one of the more competent genre craftsmen working today. He’s landed chills and dark humor in efforts such as “High Tension,” “Piranha 3D,” and the recent “Horns,” but “The 9th Life of Louis Drax” finds the filmmaker looking to grow as a storyteller, moving away from overt scares to more emotional developments, disguised as a quirky tale of an accident-prone boy finally confronting his problematic years. An adaptation of Liz Jensen’s novel, “Louis Drax” is unable to translate its literary complexity to the screen, with writer Max Minghella struggling to make sense of the story’s working parts, which cover a wide range of emotions and malicious events. Aja tries to find the material’s heart, but he’s much better communicating its menace.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com