Financial troubles, job stress, and a fraught home life would be enough to push anyone to the edge. The start of Brad Anderson's low-budget nail-biter Session 9 is where we find Gordon, even with the presence of early-2000s TV star David Caruso. A lot of the heavy atmospheric lifting comes ready-made with the help of Anderson, who has worked in movies and TV since. Phil told Gordon to look at this as they drove up to the hospital for the first time. It feels right. Danvers is an intimidating structure, its empty windows, peeling paint, flooded floors, and left-behind medical equipment suggest deep psychic wounds that once resided there. It doesn't feel like a place of healing because of the poison in the air. As Gordon, Phil, and the rest of the team discover, its dark history still has the power. Session 9 has a lot of references to The Shining, but there are little details, like the fact that Gordon's wife is named Wendy. The path to that ending still has some unexpected twists. The decrepit asylum is a horror trope that is favored by found-footage movies as well as TV shows about ghost hunters. Session 9 strives to bring heft to its story beyond its spooky as hell backdrop.
Gordon is the main character, but most everyone gets fleshed out to satisfying effect. Phil is Gordon's best friend, but they don't always agree; when Phil estimates the clean-up job will take at least three weeks, Gordon says two. Gordon chases down the head of public works in Danvers and insists that they can get the job done in a week, but also adds stress to the situation. Phil and Hank have beef because of Phil's ex dumping him for Hank, Jeff's inexperience may be exasperating at times, but he genuinely wants to do a good job for his uncle, and Mike has fallen into this line of work. There are no stock characters in the main cast. The performances feel lived-in, and there is a familiarity between the men that makes their shit-talking sessions, which can teeter on the line between joking and loathing, come across as authentic.
The security guard and Danvers city official characters are less dynamic than the other characters, but they provide much-needed information for the audience. You are already uneasy, and then you learn that the prefrontal lobotomy was perfect here at Danvers. Danvers would have been an unhappy home for its thousands of patients if the psychiatric methods that were discussed in Session 9 had been used. Mike has an interest in Danvers lore, which increases once he discovers a box marked "evidence" in the basement, filled with reel-to-reel tapes of therapy sessions of a patient. Soon he becomes obsessed with slipping away from his duties so he can listen to the sounds of Mary, and her doctor becomes a key part of the movie.
Session 9 leaps from slow-burn unease to a rapid-fire gore fest at about the three-fourths mark. It brings a tidy but incredibly grim end to the story, but there is no sense of relief for anyone. The feeling that the vulnerable may still encounter evil no matter where they go is what you take away from Session 9.
Shudder has Session 9 streaming.
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