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Amazon.co.uk Review
Few things are more sure-fire creepy than huge abandoned buildings, and Session 9 has one of the eeriest buildings you've ever seen. A hazardous-materials-cleanup company has been hired to eliminate asbestos tiles and other toxic material from a gigantic mental hospital that had been shut down in the 1980s. But as one member of the team starts to nose into old files in the office, he uncovers a series of tape recordings of psychiatric sessions--nine of them--related to a notorious sexual abuse case. Soon, toxic materials and dark spirits start to merge. Like The Blair Witch Project (and most horror movies, really), Session 9 is longer on atmosphere and dream logic than story--but the atmosphere is effectively unsettling. A strong cast (including Peter Mullan, David Caruso, and Brendan Sexton III) do an effective job of slowly cracking under stress and evil influences. --Bret Fetzer
Special Features
English
Region 2
Region 2
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great budget horror,
By Neb (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Session 9 [DVD] (DVD)
Whilst lacking depth and never really drawing you in enough, Session 9 oozes atmosphere and is one of the most beautifully shot horror films of recent years. Furthermore, if you buy it for the same reason I bought it - a look around the disused psychiatric hospital that is the real star of the film - you will not be disappointed. In many ways this is the perfect urban explorer's horror film, every nook and corner of the hospital explored, with great use of familiar props like patient's drawings, dusty boxes of documents and restraint chairs. An original plot, great ending and some truly creepy moments add up to make this the best horror film you've never heard of.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE MOST GENUINELY CREEPY FILM OF THE LAST DECADE,
By
This review is from: Session 9 [DVD] (DVD)
I consider myself to be not just a fan of horror movies but someone who has steeped himself in them from the 1960s onwards. I've not just seen them all, I've collected most of 'em, and it's easy to understand why most contemporary examples, particularly the unnecessary remakes of classic titles, leave me bored to tears. And then I came upon "Session 9".
It was a link from a Fangoria book that pointed me in the right direction, and boy, has my faith in the genre been restored. You bet. The last couple of films that actually 'spooked' me in any real sense were "Halloween" (in the cinema) and "Candyman" (late at night at home), but I challenge you to watch "Session 9" anywhere, any time, and not be affected by it. Everyone else quite rightly speaks of the location setting as almost the principal character, what Stephen King in "Danse Macabre" refers to as "the bad place". The story Brad Anderson and Stephen Gevedon have concocted not merely utilises this creepy piece of real estate, rather the place itself seems to have elicited the story from them. No spoilers intended, but it is perhaps an obvious ploy to fill a deserted mental institution with a cast of characters that bring their own madness and neuroses into the place. The ensemble cast act magnificently in this most eerie of environments but special praise must go to Peter Mullan for a bravura performance as Gordon, boss of the Hazmat Elimination Company, brought in to clear the Danvers State Mental Hospital of its toxic elements after its closure 15 years ago, but singularly unable to clear his mind of the dark secrets it holds. The cinematography and especially the sound design create the perfect images and noises to unsettle the audience with (almost) no CGI nonsense to spoil the illusion. I'd had concerns about this movie being 'shot' on Hi-Definition video but I needn't have worried. It looks magnificent, and would not have been any better had it been on conventional film. (I've viewed it both on a conventional TV and also on a large screen from an AV projector, and it looked superb both times.) More than most horror movies, "Session 9" stands repeated viewings and actually gets creepier each time you see it, when you already understand the real 'horror' within the film rather than the perceived 'threat' that the director tantalisingly misleads you with on first viewing. Its effect comes from an impending sense of dread rather than shock. There is gore, but it hardly matters after all the tension and terror that has gone before. Even the featurette in the bonus features ("The Haunted Palace") is creepy when the cast and crew talk of the genuinely disturbing effect of filming in this most forbidding of real places. I very rarely enthuse to this extent about a mere horror film, particularly one that's almost 8 years old now, but this one is different. It won't leave my mind, and I feel it is only fair that, like casting a rune, you should also partake of the delicious frissons engendered by this sadly under-rated masterpiece. But you have been warned - once inside Danvers State there's no leaving it!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
By A Customer
This review is from: Session 9 [DVD] (DVD)
I would agree in general terms with most of the reviews already posted, but I think that the ending was actually far better than the other reviewers have let on. In fact, it seemed to me to do justice to the mounting psychological tension in a way that was unexpected, shocking and (in the end) little short of epiphanic. In one of the interviews included with the extra features, Peter Mullan (I think) talks about the feeling of dread that working in Danvers Hospital inspired -- and that is precisely it: dread, not abject fear or revulsion, is what the plot trades on, and the climax is faithful to that. If it were a novel, it would Lovecraft, not Stephen King (or maybe Lovecraft with Clive Barker writing the screenplay). It is the closest thing that I've yet seen to Lars von Trier's equally excellent RIGET, in terms of atmosphere and sheer creepiness. I highly recommend it and think it deserves better than 3.5 stars, so I'll give it 5 stars and hope that bumps it up a bit.
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