Session 9 (2001)

Tagline: Fear is a place.

Curiosity: My friends reference this four-second clip a lot:



Plot: Gordon (Peter Mullan, Children of Men, Trainspotting) runs an asbestos crew. His company badly needs money and takes on a difficult job refurbishing an old asylum. While Gordon nearly goes insane trying to get work done and reconnect with his estranged wife, the rest of the team keeps things going.

Then shit starts to get real. Hank (Josh Lucas) disappears after trying to steal a large sum of cash he found hidden in the hospital. Gordon’s behavior becomes more and more erratic. Intercut between these scenes are audio tapes fellow worker Mike (Steven Gevedon) finds from therapy sessions with Marry Hobbes (Jurian Hughes), a woman with multiple personality disorder, leading up to the frightening, terrifying, downright unpleasant Session 9 (!!!).

Thoughts: Taken overall, Session 9 is a gripping psychological thriller. I mean that in the strictest sense too. The plot involves some pretty grisly bits, but writer/director Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Transsiberian) handles everything tastefully, leaving a lot of scares to dialogue and imagination. Mullan and David Caruso are game for all sorts of creepy activities, as is the rest of the cast. The problem lies in the script.

Session 9 is pretty good, but it’s not perfect. The dialogue is ho-hum, occasionally spelling out things too much. There are a couple of instances where foreshadowing dialogue is too on-the-nose. Other exchanges are just artless. I think Anderson could have trimmed a couple of seconds here and there, excising maybe as much as 10 minutes of film from the 102-minute running time. Three-quarters of the way through, the movie hits a wall where the viewer will have figured out two possible endings, and it spins around for a bit needlessly before finally delivering the outcome. The Session 9 segments that give the film its title are more compelling in this regard; they’re free of excess but full of mounting dread.

But it’s still worth it just to watch Caruso act.

Reflection: Hey… FUCK YOU.