Session 9 | David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon | 4.5 "I Live in the Weak and the Wounded".

Session 9 | David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon | I live in the weak and the wounded.....

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Session 9

	Session 9 David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon Polygram USA Video, 2002 average customer review:based on 230 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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

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4.5 "I Live in the Weak and the Wounded".

'Session 9' is a 2002 movie directed by Brad Anderson based on a screenplay by Stephen Gevedon(who also plays Mike). It stars Peter Mullen, David Caruso, Josh Lucas, and Brandan Sexton III.

After a short, but very erie intro, we are introduced to Gordon(Mullen), an owner of a small hasmat asbestos removal company. As the sound fades in we here Gordon's second in command Phil(Caruso)speaking about how worn out Gordon looks, as well as the job they are currently bidding on. They have come to bid on a sizable job; removing Asbestos tiles from the massive Danvers State Psychiatric Hospital. Desperately needing work to support his wife and new baby, Gordon garantees that He can pull of the job in two(then changes to one)week.
He gets the job and brings in the staff. As we are introduced to his crew, we get a strong sence that each person is dealing with their own personal issues. As the movie progresses, strange occurances start to occur; Is it supernatural, or is it each memeber cracking under the stress of the job and personal issues?

'Session 9' is one of those inde movies that comes out of nowhere and takes genre fans by suprise. Over the last few years it has been recognized by genre fans and will most certainly be remembered as one of the best supernatural/psychological thrillers of the 00's.

The plot is fairly simple yet ambiguous; a hasmat team removing asbestos experiance strange occurances. However, there is a rising tension that leads the viewer to question whether it's a supernatural movie or a movie about mental instability. 'Simon'(explained later)is very ambiguous; is he in someone's head, or is he a type of malevolent 'genius loci'? Ultimately it's left up to the viewer to figure out. Similarities can be made to movies such as 'The Changeling', 'The Shining', and 'Don't Look Now', However, as the movie progresses, the film developes it's own unique and haunting identity.

The acting is definetly a strong point. The acting is so good, it brings a false sence of realism. Caruso, Mullen, Gevedon, Lucas(Hank), and Sexton(Jeff) all bring a very real sence of real people with real issues dealing with a harsh job. All the characters are well defined and acted and although vegue, we are given clues to what is going on in each person's head. Having a minimal cast, the acting is important to keeping the story going while keeping the tension rising at an escalating pace.

The dialoge is centered around mental instability which ties heavily in with the plot. Whether it's Gordon trying to keep his buisness, Phil losing his girlfriend to co-worker Hank, Mike trying to figure out his future, or Jeff's nyctophobia; Every character has issues they're dealing with that is amplified by the stress of the job. This is heavily reflected by the dialoge.
One of the highlights and namesake of the film is a group of reels that Mike finds on his break. As the film progresses, Mike becomes engrossed by the content. The tapes are a series of '9 sessions' of a former paitent named Mary who spent most of her life, and died at Danvers. Apparently, Mary suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder(now called Dissociative Identity Disorder), and was involved in very traumatic events as a child. The events left her so severely scarred, she had developed three different personalities that reveal themselves, and what happend over the course of the 9 sessions.

The editing is perfect. The movie is 97 min. and never drags. Right from the first frame there is an escalating tension with the characters individualy as well as a group, and with the building itself. Danvers was a real mental hospital that had been in decay since the mid 80's and the way the movie was shot captures this frighteningly well. You'll see alot of slow tracking shots intercut with wide-angle shots that almost makes the building become a character. There are several shot that implies what life was like for the paitents, and it's not all good.
The way the tapes are edited into the movie is flawless. As the movie progresses we are introduced to the three personalities of Mary; The Princess, Billy, and enigmatic Simon. The introduction and story of each personality is placed for a reason that adds a rising tension and creepiness. In a few scenes, we see pictures of Mary, and the look in her eyes WILL send a chill up your back, and portrays mental instability in a frighteningly realistic way; So effective with so little!

The cinematography is a big part of what makes this movie great. It has slightly gritty look, but with these kind of movies, it brings a 'you are there' feeling that is a major part of the realism. It was shot on location in Mass. at the Danvers State Mental Hospital(since torn down). The entire building was in a severely delapitated state which only adds to the creepiness and compliments the story. The gritty look with the deteriorating hospital brings a 'Silent Hill' vibe to the film, and enyone who has played the games will instantly know what I'm talking about. This can easily be scene in the cover art.

This movie is low on gore and violence, and high on creepiness, tension, and suspence. For those who like psychological thrillers and supsence, this movie is a diamond. The only reason I gave this movie a 4.5 instead of a 5 is because of the 'finale' as well as the end, It really creeped me out and left me thinking LONG after the movie was over. It effected me so much that in repeat viewings the ending actually makes me feel physically bad, that's the best way I can say it without spoilers.
If you can prepare yourself for a gutpunch of an ending, this movie from the opening frame to the closing music is deeply compelling as well as unbelievably creepy.

For fans of supernatural/psychological thrillers, this ranks up there with 'The Shining' and gets the highest recommendation!

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I live in the weak and the wounded.....

Creepy, well written, wonderfully acted and intense. This is the one thing (book, music, film, etc.) that EVERYONE enjoys when I recommend it. NO ONE has ever said "eh, it was alright"..... I'd smack then if they did! For an antagonist with no tangible screen time and few lines, Simon is extrememly unsettling and frightening. LOVE this movie.

Finally!!! A REAL horror film!!!!!

By and large, they really don't make horror movies any more. What, you might say? That's right, they don't. Rob Zombie once lamented that there were good horror movies in the 1930s, and then again in the 1970s, but not today. Well, there were also good horror movies in the 50s, 60s and 80s, but no, not today. Today we don't have horror movies, we have startle movies; we have "made you jump" movies. That's not horror. (Compare the standard fare today to Kubrick's The Shining, Medak's The Changeling, Wise's The Haunting, to the opening scene of When a Stranger Calls Back.) As the writer of this film rightly stated, horror is not about startle effects, it's about dread. A real horror film is CREEPY, it slowly builds a sense of dread through its use of mood and ambiance. With that said, Session 9 is the best horror film of this decade, and it's also scary as hell. Be warned though--it's for the intelligent viewer. It does not spoon feed its audience. Today this is a bold move and will in and of itself cause most viewers to dislike this film.

Session 9 (SPOILERS HERE) is about a team of asbestos removal experts working in Danvers Mental Hospital. One of the team discovers a tape of a patient revealing her multiple personalities to a shrink. One of her personalities, called Simon, won't reveal himself. Another team member is seen in this woman's cell, and later sitting over her grave. He starts to here a voice too, a voice that makes him do atrocious things. Incidentally, the voice itself is the creepiest damn voice I've heard in a horror film since Mercedes McCambridge's famous vocalizations for The Exorcist. This movie is downright unnerving. It is also very excellently acted--a rarity for a horror film--and amazingly filmed. The characters seem very real, the dialogue very genuine. When the kid who's scared of the dark gets stuck in the tunnel, you really feel for him. The odd thing is, the critics hated this movie. How can they get things wrong so often, especially when it comes to horror? When High Tension came out they hailed it as a masterpiece (except Ebert--who called it the turd it was). This comes out and--nothing. I even saw one film critic say that the ending, the "reveal," is lackluster. Huh? The ending is one of the creepiest endings I've ever seen!

Here is my take: Most of Mary's "personalities" are really due to dissociative identity disorder. One of them however, Simon, is the result of possession. When Gordon enters Danvers he too becomes possessed by Simon. An alternate interpretation is that there is a certain type of weak person who always has this side of their personality, an evil side, and the film calls it Simon. This interpretation does not explain why the voice on the tape is the same exact voice that Gordon hears. The movie ends with Simon eerily revealing where he "lives"--"in the weak and wounded."

This excellent horror film was brilliantly filmed in Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts. Danvers appears in several of the great H. P. Lovecraft's stories, and was likely the inspiration for his Arkham Sanitarium (which was later the inspiration for Arkham in Batman). The real Danvers rests on a hill where many of the Salem witch trials took place. Most of its buildings are connected by an underground maze of tunnels. Danvers really is where the prefrontal lobotomy was developed. Sadly, Danvers was mostly torn down a few years after this movie was made. (How can they do that? Wasn't it a historic building?) Of all things, it was turned into apartments! Who would want to live there?! Interestingly, most of the apartment development burned down. They still don't know the cause. A webcam of the construction cut out right before the fire started.

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When the soul becomes toxic

"Session 9" is a complex and very tense horror movie annex psychological drama, that will still haunt you long after it has finished, at least that's what it did to me. The story plays itself out on multiple levels and can be interpreted in as many ways, making it interesting material to discuss subjects ranging from MPS to possession.
"Session 9" is that kind of movie that slowly crawls under your skin and increasingly gives you a feeling of unease and tension, that most horror movies today unfortunately are unable to instill. It is a subtle human drama, aided by fantastic performances by David Caruso and even more so Peter Mullan.
The latter is in charge of a clean-up crew that has to remove asbestos in a gigantic former psychiatric institution as part of preparations for a renovation. Peter Mullan's character Gordon really needs this job financially and was only able to beat competition in the bid for it by promising the contractor to do it in half the time, a week. Even for a team this experienced, excluding Gordon's nephew Jeff who is new in the business of asbestos removal, it makes it a quite stressful job, but at the end a bonus awaits them if they make it on time and so all of them agree to do it. All of them means, aside from Gordon and Jeff, Phil (David Caruso) who manages the team, Hank, an annoying guy who has a problem with Phil since hitting it off with Phil's former girlfriend which he never fails to point out to Phil and finally Mike, who gave up his law studies in college but is considering going back to it.
Gordon recently had a baby and is suffering a lot from the stress and exhaustion that comes with it, which is a concern to the others of the team, especially as business wasn't exactly booming before this job.
On day 1 both Mike and Hank make a find: the former a number of tapes with recordings of therapy sessions with someone called Mary suffering from MPS (Multiple Personality Syndrome) whose case he becomes obsessed with and the latter a collection of old coins which he decides to pick up at night to start a new life somewhere (which includes attending casino school in Vegas). It will be his last visit on the premises. After that night to the others Hank simply bailed and pressure on Gordon is even more increased to get the job done in time and he increasingly becomes convinced that his team is distrustful of his ability to pull it off. He has cause to think this as Phil tries to take over the reigns as he feels compelled to as a response to Gordon's increasing mental instability.
As an audience we regularly go back to a scene where Gordon sits in his car in front of his house waiting to go in as it is raining and he watches his baby cry, It's a flashback to the day he got the job and he is about to tell his wife the good news accompanied by groceries and flowers. We watch him go in and as the camera focuses on a pan with boiling water that accidentally is being poured on Gordon's leg by his wife we hear Gordon cry out in pain, soon followed by a cry of distress of his wife.
The sessions Mike listens to in the meantime increasingly make clear what happened to their subject Mary and gradually the relationship with the events in the present become clear.
The movie cranks up the tension through a series of events until Gordon reaches a breaking point with tragic consequences. Not until the end we find out what really was at the beginning of this chain of events, which is a shocking reveal.
Apart from being a very suspenseful thriller it's also a surprisingly impressive study of the dark side within our nature, which under normal circumstances we can easily keep in check, the primitive purely based on primal instinct primate within us, which can suddenly surface under the right circumstances and make us do things which we wouldn't have conceived of beforehand. The atmosphere inside the decayed institution is like Gordon's inner life, where the "asbestos", so toxic to other people, as it turns out, cannot be removed in time and does its devastating work.

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