The philosophical thriller Nine Miles Down is a spine-chilling journey into the psyche of a man struggling to escape his tortured past.

In a remote region of the Sahara Desert, a sandstorm batters a deserted drilling station. Thomas ("Jack") Jackman, a security patrolman, battles through the high winds to find out why all contact with the station has been lost. Originally built for gas exploration, and then abandoned, the site had recently been taken over by a multi-national research team intent on drilling deeper into the earth’s crust than ever before.
 

But now there is not a living soul left in the complex. Jack finds abundant food and resources, and some evidence of violence, including the destruction of all communications equipment. It is eerie, inexplicable and unsettling, but, stranded by the howling sandstorm, Mac is forced to stay the night.

Next morning the storm has abated and, to his surprise, Jack encounters a breathtakingly beautiful woman jogging in from the desert. She is Jennie Christianson (“JC”), who claims to be the last remaining member of the science team.
 

She tells how they breached the roof of a vast cavern at the unprecedented depth of nine miles, but how a series of mysterious incidents soon followed. Strange sightings and hallucinations plagued the team, driving them to madness and despair and leading to the deaths of a Dr Varga and the project leader, Dr. Borman. The remaining scientists had fled, abandoning JC with the two victims' corpses, which she stored in a freezer.

JC’s story seems incomplete, and Jack, an ex-cop, thinks she is hiding a more sinister explanation. Understandably JC is anxious to leave, but Jack tells her that they can’t just abandon what is apparently a crime scene, they have to stay until the police arrive.

This gives him a chance to investigate further, and soon he uncovers evidence that points to holes in JC’s story. For one thing, Jack's HQ tells him that there were no female members officially on the science team. Jack pressures JC to reveal more, and she claims that some of the more superstitious local drilling workers had believed they drilled down to “hell” and released something “evil” from the bowels of the earth. She tells how this idea had spread like a virus, eventually infecting the minds of the entire scientific crew as well... except for her.
 

When Jack seems sceptical, JC angrily plays him a tape. She says it is natural, caused no doubt by some resonance in the drill-pipe, but that the others, insanely, heard in those eerie sounds something like the voices of millions of tortured souls, screaming.

JC warns Jack not to leap to a supernatural conclusion himself, telling him that some kind of atavistic fear caused the team’s escalating paranoia in the first place. She says her initial reluctance to tell him more had been in the interests of protecting him from whatever affected them. However, JC is unable to provide Jack with any logical alternative explanations for everything he uncovers.
 

Flying out to the drilling site, the police helicopter crew sent from the town of Khamsina comes across a vehicle trapped in the sand. Landing to investigate they find one of the fleeing scientists, a Dr Ivanov. Despite being barely conscious, as they check on him he is determined to hold onto a sample flask he has with him...

The helicopter returns to base and hospital, meaning Jack and JC are forced to spend another night in creepy, isolated confinement. Despite an obvious mutual attraction, Jack tries hard to resist JC's charms. In fact, his suspicions of her is deepened by his attraction to her. Over dinner, Jack and JC talk about the true nature of “good” and “evil”, and Jack finds himself opening up to her, revealing a disastrous, tragic episode from his past that he rarely discusses with anyone.

Jack has been on his own in the world since the day his wife took her and their childrens' lives six years earlier. Tormented with grief and guilt about his loss, he had taken a job on the other side of the world to get as far away from his past as possible. But the past is always with him. Since arriving at the drill site he has had visions, flashbacks, as though his wife is trying to contact him from hell. He feels responsible for sending her there, but cannot bring himself to admit he had been having an affair.
 

JC worries that the same problems the crew experienced have taken hold of Jack, too. She argues that hell is not a physical place, but exists only in the minds of men and the soul of each individual. Tough outer defences are useless against an enemy gnawing away from within. Gently JC first comforts and then seduces Jack, despite his misgivings.

That night, wracked with guilt and torment, both “hells” appear to Jack as one; the entire complex behaves like a representation of his own physical body, through which his spirit is drawn with every breath. Mac awakes convinced that JC is the physical personification of evil, sent by his dead wife to test him.

At dawn Jack sets out to prove it. He uncovers evidence that JC is an impostor, indicating that she is responsible for the murder of the entire drilling crew. Alarmed, Jack attacks JC, who lashes out in self-defence. And she is strong. Believing this shows her guilt, Jack locks himself inside Dr. Borman's quarters for protection. There he discovers a video message from Borman warning that he and his team have released an “evil force” from the drill shaft and that all efforts should be mobilised to prevent it spreading to the rest of the world. Jack believes Borman’s apocalyptic taped warning, despite the ranting nature of the message.
 

JC begs Jack to ignore Borman and escape the drill complex, but he rejects her pleas as sick, twisted lies. The more she argues that it is just Jack’s own personal hell that has been unleashed in his mind, the more Jack believes she is an impostor, and the more JC appeals to logic and reason, the more Jack believes he is the victim of her devilish mind-play.

Jack’s mental state crumbles, undermining his ability to think clearly. To him, reality, imagination and his horrific memories become indiscernible from one another. What began as a romantic seduction turns into a relentless cat and mouse game in a confined space.

Jack tries desperately to outwit the otherworldly creature he believes he is facing, and for JC it becomes a struggle for her very survival in the confrontation with the apparently delusional man she has fallen in love with.

JC gives up trying to reason with him. She says she can offer Jack what he wants above all – his family back. But only in exchange for his soul. Is this some strange tactical ploy, or something else entirely?

The audience is kept guessing as to whether she has revealed her true nature at last.

Nine Miles Down can best be described as a "thinking man's scary movie". It will tease the gullibility of the audience while exploring the consequences of abandoning logic and reason for ancient fears and superstitions.