Shane Acker’s 2005 Academy Award-nominated animated short 9 was so impressive that it caught the eye of visual maestro Tim Burton, causing him to jump aboard as the feature film’s producer alongside Timur Bekmambetov, who directed the Russian Watch trilogy, and also absurd actioner Wanted. Given the impact of the original short, there was hope that Acker’s feature length (albeit barely) film might work as a lavishly dark antidote to the pleasant and colourful efforts from Pixar. While there is plenty to admire from a visual perspective, especially given the low budget (for an animated film), 9 is a film sorely lacking in focus and intrigue, and is a potent reminder that not all shorts, even ones as brilliant as Acker’s, will necessarily work particularly well as a feature, even in spite of a lean, 79-minute runtime.

Where 9 succeeds is with the small seeds of narrative promise that it plants, but then sadly never capitalises upon fully. There is a rather compelling God parallel from the outset; the film opens as a brilliant scientist manages to bring nine ragdolls to life with the help of a strange talisman, but seemingly at the cost of his own life. The protagonist is the final ragdoll created, 9 (Elijah Wood), born into a world without any concept of God or spirituality, while through our own objective view, we know that we are watching perhaps a more horrifying possibility, that God, or at least these ragdoll’s approximation of a God – their creator – is dead. 9 gradually meets up with the other ragdolls, such as 1 (Christopher Plummer), the elder of the group and the first ragdoll created by the scientist, and also 7 (Jennifer Connelly), the only female among the group and also a fierce survivor type, for they all share the same quest; to survive in a post-apocalyptic Earth where humanity has seemingly been wiped out, and sentient machine monsters stalk what remains of Earth, destroying any non-machine that they find.

There are some admittedly chilling moments throughout 9; a glimpse of a mother and what appears to be her child lying dead in a car is particularly memorable, but the film sadly never fully realises either its interesting spiritual bent, or the length and breadth of this dystopia, the horrors of which are more reminiscent of the sentinels from The Matrix trilogy than being actually menacing in their own right.

The main problem evident early on, though, is that the nine main characters are by and large just too similar and indistinguishable from one another; the ragdolls aren’t written with enough personality, meaning that it is difficult to discern the supporting characters, and you’ll probably not even realise that the likes of John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover and Martin Landau are in the film without checking out a cast list. Sadly, one almost wishes that each of the ragdolls was coloured differently.

The dramatic motions are a tad stale, too, with the film’s piecemeal plot very basically involving the ragdolls mounting a rescue effort when one of their kind is kidnapped by one of the sentinels. So, why see 9? The visuals are rather splendid, and considering the low $30m budget (compared to Pixar’s films, which err dangerously close to $200m a pop), the rendering standard remains high even if there’s a lot of monochrome and not much variety to dazzle the eye with. The low budget means the style is an economic one, but there are still some nice touches, such as the ragdoll’s pupils moving in their eyes when a bright light is turned on, thus for the money they have, the detail is quite impressive.

There are peaks and troughs of action throughout the film, and the chase sequences can be quite exciting, but Acker’s direction is rather pedestrian, with a lack of involving shots, and strangely, even a lack of motion during some of the chase portions, which somewhat squanders the otherwise solid visuals. Furthermore, the film suffers thematically, as everything unfolds without much emotion; we know that big, important things are occurring on-screen, but we are never asked to care about them, and although visual films can tell visual stories, there is an alarming lack of dialogue during portions that fail to actually deliver visual excitement or intrigue in lieu.

Although there is a clever metaphysical rumination at the start of the third act, the film just doesn’t go far enough with the existential subtext that it is so clearly and so desperately pining for, reinforcing the film’s superficiality and unfortunate lack of depth. Given how 9 barely runs in at 70 minutes once the credits roll, few are going to expect densely-packed dialogues, but with such high-minded ideas intermittently sifting throughout, it is surprising that they are executed so procedurally. Acker is a talent to watch, and the film is an artistic triumph, but his narrative needs work.