Brad Anderson's Session 9
“It’s gonna get ugly,” winces hard-nosed crew manager Phil (David Caruso, Kiss of Death) by Day Four of grueling asbestos removal in the abandoned, dilapidated, psychologically unsettling Danvers State Mental Hospital. He’s not referring to the dangerous manual labor in the damp underground tunnels or even the precarious generator that threatens to strand the five-man team in this “haunted” asylum with the lights out. Muttered with a frightened grin, it’s Phil’s grim attempt to acknowledge the strange traumas that have become manifest in the group, perhaps brought about by supernatural forces. Quiet, introspective college-boy Mike (Stephen Gevedon, States of Control) may unknowingly have reawakened old ghosts as he gradually receded from his assigned duties to track the case history of a multiple personality patient, leading him to the secrets contained in a long buried recording labeled Session 9...and we all know what curiosity did to the cat. These guys might not make it to Day Five.
From Day One, they’re already on shaky ground. Hazmat Elimination Company owner Gordon Fleming (rugged Scottish character actor Peter Mullan) vows to have the hazardous job done in one week when the town engineer has already quoted him at least two or three solid weeks, minimum. Mean spirited working class grunt Hank (Josh Lucas) is taunting his so-called compadres as a means of dealing with the resentment of a dead-end life. Gordon’s scatterbrained nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III) is unfamiliar with the hardware and forgetful of his protective safety suit and mask.
These edgy loners gradually learn there’s more to the work than meets the eye, disturbed by the faded artwork still tacked to the walls in the “seclusion rooms” of former patients and pervasive rumors of apparitions and Satanic hosts. Footsteps, heartbeats and shadows become the stuff that sleepless nights are made of. Gordon slowly retreats into a near-catatonic state of guilt over family secrets and Mike invests his time and resources into the dense asylum mythology. One even starts having doubts about protagonist (by default) Phil’s dogged, intense attempts to rally his increasingly distraught team into action. There are only so many times he can reaffirm that individual tensions are “becoming a liability” before casting doubts about his own steadiness. Why is he so hell-bent on this renovation work anyway? As one of the characters from John Carpenter’s The Thing (another male-centric story of paranoid isolation) dourly intoned, “I don’t know who to trust.”
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