9 (12A)

97 mins

WITH Tim Burton’s name attached as a producer, you can be certain that 9 – not to be confused with the musical Nine, due for release next month – won’t be your usual animated film. The 12A certificate too hints that this will be darker than the usual Disney or Pixar fare. It is too. “Moderate sustained threat”

is how the BBFC terms it. For me, 9 is downright scary at times as director Shane Acker expands on a short film of the same name.

When 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) comes to life, he’s in a postapocalyptic world where the human race has been wiped out. By chance, he discovers a community of others like him taking refuge from the fearsome machines determined to eradicate humanity.

9 is one of a set of numbered “stitchpunks” – not unlike rag dolls, only odder looking – created by a scientist in the hope they’ll continue the fight against the machines. This is a lot to take in. An animated film like Snow White, it ain’t. The visuals are inventive and startling as the numbered community – voiced by, among others, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer and John C Reilly – have to decide between running for their lives or risking dismemberment by the mechanical claw of the nasty machines.

Just as everything settles down, Somewhere Over The Rainbow begins on the soundtrack and you know the haunting beauty of that song is the prelude to something not very nice happening.