Session 9
"I live in the weak and the wounded...doc."
In the mean time, I wanted to post an article, another one in my Freaky Flicks series. This time I'm writing about a little known horror-thriller called "Session 9". The movie was given a small limited theatrical release in 2001 but became more of a "hit" through it's DVD rentals and sales, that's how I discovered it. It stars David Caruso, Peter Mullan and Josh Lucas.
The film follows a team
of asbestos cleaners who are hired to do a deep cleaning of an abandoned insane asylum that has quite a terrifying past. The mental institution is based off and shot at Danvers State Hospital (which has it's own real history of haunts). It's quite a large building, and this team has only a week to clean up all the asbestos. Peter Mullan plays the team leader, and he may have overshot his finish time of the project, because other teams said it should take over two weeks. He just a had a baby, and from what we gather, he is having some marital problems at home. The rest of his team consists of his long time work partner played by Caruso, his young punk nephew (who has a mullet!), a free spirit gambler (Lucas) and an ex-law student turned asbestos cleaner.This hospital used to treat patients with severe electro shock therapy, and lobotomy's (gross). The ex-law student tells a story about a girl who went under this kind of therapy to reveal that her family used to sexually abuse her and bring her to cult meetings where they sacrificed babies. The girl sued her own family once these memories were surfaced, only to find out after some tests that the girl was a virgin. The family counter-sues the hospital, and along with some city budget cuts, the hospital loses everything and shuts down. The building lay dormant for over twenty years only to be homes for bums and rebel teenagers.
The team starts their job, and odd things begin to happen. The leader starts to hear strange and creepy voices and he starts to feel a little "lost" mentally speaking. One of the workers suddenly goes missing. One of them ditches the asbestos work, because in the hospital he finds some old recordings of a therapy session from one of the old patients. He listens to them instead of working. The recordings, done in sessions (this is where the title Session 9 comes from) reveals this patient suffers from severe multiple personality disorder. She was locked up for apparently snapping and killing her brother with a knife. Her sessions reveal each personality in different voices. There's the innocent personality, the protective personality,etc. We hear hints of a personality called "Simon" but do not hear this one until the end during the ninth session when things start to go nuts. Eventually chaos ensues, they all start to go a little loopy while working, and things go south real quick.
This movie to this day, is one of the creepiest and most unsettling movies I've seen. The recordings of all the sessions are truly freaky because there are people out the
re like that. Especially that final session when Simon comes out and the story of the film starts to connect. There's much more to this movie, but I don't really want to spoil it. There is death. There is blood. There aren't really any ghosts per say, this movie is 100% psychological horror and done really really well. There are some moments that are really quiet, particularly a scene where one of the characters is walking down a really dark hallway and he senses someone is there with him. The final line of the film sums up the movie, and sums up the intentions of one of the main characters, but you have to see it to understand. If you are into psychological horror flicks, please go out and rent this movie. It's on Netflix as well as at Blockbuster for only a dollar! Watch it in the dark, because it will creep you out I think!
--Mike--
