Johnny Depp is Dean Corso, "book detective" who wheels and deals old books, the majority of them dealing with magic and the supernatural. He's hired by a rich collector named Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to acquire the last two texts of an extremely rare manuscript from the Middle Ages. It's rumored that the co-author of this text is Satan himself. He gives Corso the one copy he has--and sends him off to Europe to authenticate the other two copies. Along the way, bad things happen to the owners--and Corso believes that Balkan is responsible. There's also a mysterious young woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) who shows up and she has some seemingly magic abilities. Eventually Corso--and the audience--figures out what is really going on in the last scene, when Balkan acquires what he wants and performs a ritual from the book...
The Ninth Gate is an overall dead serious, creepy movie, along the lines of Roman Polanski's earlier horror movie, ROSEMARY'S BABY. Recommended.
Johnny Depp is Dean Corso, "book detective" who wheels and deals old books, the majority of them dealing with magic and the supernatural. He's hired by a rich collector named Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to acquire the last two texts of an extremely rare manuscript from the Middle Ages. It's rumored that the co-author of this text is Satan himself. He gives Corso the one copy he has--and sends him off to Europe to authenticate the other two copies. Along the way, bad things happen to the owners--and Corso believes that Balkan is responsible. There's also a mysterious young woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) who shows up and she has some seemingly magic abilities. Eventually Corso--and the audience--figures out what is really going on in the last scene, when Balkan acquires what he wants and performs a ritual from the book...
