Session 9: Haunted House Done Right

Written by Brad Anderson Stephen Gevedon

David Caruso .... Phil Stephen Gevedon .... Mike Paul Guilfoyle .... Bill Griggs Peter Mullan .... Gordon Fleming Brendan Sexton III .... Jeff Charles Broderick .... Security Guard Lonnie Farmer .... Doctor Larry Fessenden .... Craig McManus Jurian Hughes .... Mary Hobbes Sheila Stasack .... Wendy

R 102 min

Every so often, there's a movie that comes along that is both scary and suspenseful, that doesn't require huge amounts of blood and mock-satanic rituals to do its job. And when one of those come along, I'm rather pleased with it. Session 9 is one of those movies. The DVD menu is kind of interesting, actually. Strange sounds of tape recorders running backwards and distortion on the screen text typeface make for a rather eerie opening, giving you that certain sense that something will be very wrong in the relatively near future.

What we've got here is the story of a mental hospital closed for almost twenty years, and the assorted strange goings-on inside the now-abandoned hulk. And what a hulk it is, too. This monstrous Victorian-era building staring out over the tree covered countryside like some kind of dark cult leader waving the kool-aid and screaming about "my babies." The inside walls, on the other hand, are in pretty sad shape. Covered with graffiti of various types, everything from obscene suggestions to strange pictures of people to even a couple of pentagrams.

The former mental hospital also has a lot of history--assorted evil rituals and baby-eating whatnot.

And all this assorted business adds up to some very nasty things lurking inside the mental hospital.

A group of fellows are sent in to clean the place up so it can be restored and used for some reason or another, they don't really say very clearly, but what they find in that building is something else. Like reel-to-reel tape recordings describing horrifying events from Christmases past...described by a patient with multiple personality disorder. And almost in the background, we've got five guys on a cleaning crew, their lives and hopes intersecting on one giant scale with the haunted hospital in the foreground.

It's all very psychologically haunting.

And man, are there creepy scenes in this! One of the best hits about an hour and fifteen minutes in, where the mystery is getting right to its thickest. The generator they're using to provide lights and power to their equipment shuts down, and a tunnel lined with light bulbs just suddenly starts to shut down, one after the next.

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