Two words: apocalyptic steampunk. If that micro-definition grabbed you, then prepare to have your jaw dropped by this animated feast.

Directed by first-timer Shane Acker as an expansion of his Oscar-nominated 2005 short (also called 9), this stunning feature has generated plenty of buzz. Part of that’s due to having fantasy heavyweights Tim Burton and Night Watch’s Timur Bekmambetov on board as producers. But 9’s optically impressive enough to justify any hype.

The eponymous 9 is the film’s hero (voiced by Frodo himself, Elijah Wood), a weird rag-doll automaton. Some time after an catastrophic event, 9 awakens and staggers out into the crippled landscape in search of answers to his existence. It’s not long before he discovers that he’s one of nine survivors, all similarly created, yet wholly different in character.

From the artistic 6 (Crispin Glover), who’s beset by freaky visions, to the frail inventor, 2 (Martin Landau), each are blindly governed by the dictatorial 1 (Christopher Plummer). 9’s intervention hauls them out of their fear-wracked existence so that they can attempt to destroy the Earth’s only other remaining ‘life’ forms – huge, ultra-violent mechanical beasts – and consequently forge a brighter future.

The plot isn’t entirely original (think The Terminator with sock-puppets, injected with a huge dose of spirituality) but it doesn’t really matter. The genius here lies in the force of the visuals. Acker’s created a dense, colour-drained, post-Armageddon wonderland that beautifully merges decayed gothic elegance with the remnants of war-torn industrialism.

Best of all, though, are our stitchpunk heroes themselves, and the horrors they’re forced to face, such as a serpentine creature with a disembodied doll’s head – the kind of thing that might cause sleepless nights for the movie’s younger viewers.

If animation legends Jan Svankmajer (Faust) and the Brothers Quay (Street Of Crocodiles) ever made a mainstream picture together, 9 is what it would resemble. And that’s a heavy-duty recommendation for seeing this movie – especially on a big screen.

Prepare for post-apocalyptic, pleasure overdrive, because this is the bleakest slice of animated mayhem you’ll see this year