Featuring the voices of Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, and Jennifer Connelly. Rated PG. Opens Wednesday, September 9, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

In this animated feature, hand puppet–like beings wander through a desolate, postapocalyptic future. It is gradually revealed that they are aspects of a single personality who created them during the endgame of a battle between humans and machines that the people foolishly built and then couldn’t control.

The concept is intriguing, and the background art has the look of old newsreel footage, tinged by a bleakly monochromatic Eastern European aesthetic. To make 9, director Shane Acker and cowriter Pamela Pettler expanded Acker’s 11-minute short of the same name, which netted an Oscar nomination three years ago.

Overstretched, even at 79 minutes, the film centres on the last-made, titular fellow (voiced by Elijah Wood), the most evolved and inquisitive of the bunch. He wonders why other survivors (including John C. Reilly and Crispin Glover) have entrusted their fates to the cruelly autocratic 1, but maybe they are simply in thrall to Christopher Plummer’s British accent. The only obvious feminine presence (Jennifer Connelly) is also the most kick-ass, as her 7 leads many of the tiresomely repetitive charges against the endlessly resourceful machines.

The film decries the use of technology for nefarious purposes, but 9 puts Acker’s considerable skill at the service of a narrative driven almost exclusively by violent, noisy conflict. There is zero character development, the dialogue consists largely of war-movie clichés, and the philosophical aspects initially hinted at seem poorly thought through—when they aren’t downright contradictory. If this thing is too heavy for children and too lightweight for grownups, who’s it for, exactly?