To direct your first film must be quite the experience; But to be lucky enough to have both Tim Burton and über Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (Nightwatch/Daywatch, Wanted) producing it must cause serious physical, self-inflicted pain from constantly pinching yourself. This is exactly the boat debut director Shane Acker found himself in with his animated feature 9.

Set in a post-apocalyptic future, a ragdoll-like creature – who looks eerily like an undernourished Sackboy from the game LittleBigPlanet – wakes up alone in a room. His name is 9 (Elijah Wood), and in case he forgets, this number is also branded on his back. Stepping out into the bleak, industrial landscape for the first time, he notices that he has no voice.

How embarrassing. I wish someone had told me that my flies were halfway down.

Within moments he comes across 2 (Martin Landau), who he soon discovers is more friend than foe, after he helps him find his voice and save him from a scary mechanical beast. 2 then leads him back to a small hiding place, where others like them dwell.

Before too long, 9 is made aware of the volatile situation they’re all in, where machines were made to make life easier for everyone, only to have them turn on humans and creatures alike. When 2 is taken by the machine, 9 believes that the only course of action is to rescue him. However, not everything goes to plan, particularly when a metallic object he picked up earlier on his travels, acts as a key, breathing life into the mother of all monsters. And so begins a fight to not only save their own existence, but all of civilisation.

Based on his Oscar-nominated short which he made for his project at UCLA, Acker’s vision translates remarkably well to a more substantial feature. His dystopian vision is created with the kind of palette that would have Walt Disney turning in his freezer. What it lacks in colour it more than makes up for in having an incredibly realised world. It’s almost the stuff of nightmares, with its bleak and dangerous wasteland.

To counter-balance the striking, oppressive vistas are characters with real personality and charm. And although there’s not a whole lot of dialogue, what there is of it is delivered nicely by the vocal talent on board, which includes Wood, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly and Crispin Glover.

But the real star of the show is the animation. It’s no surprise that Burton, with his track record in warped animation, would want in on this project. It’s easy to get sucked into the pretty worlds created by the likes of Disney and Pixar, without thinking it could be done any other way. But 9 acts as an elegant reminder that there are always alternatives.

It’s only real negative is that the script could have been helped by being a little tighter. Younger viewers may end up asking questions that adults may find difficult to answer themselves. It all kind of makes sense in the end though. It does feel at times like it’s relying too much on pushing a big, woolly ideology; it could have benefited on focusing on making the story more coherent.

Included on both the Blu-ray and DVD is the original short, so you can see how the idea for the feature was conceived, which is a nice bonus.

9 is not only the perfect antidote to all things cute and Disney, it proves that alternative animation can provide just as many thrills and excitement as the next all-singing, dancing, possibly 3D studio release.

If you’re a fan of all things animated, then you need to add 9 to your ‘must see’ list.