30 in 30: A MONTH OF HORROR. SESSION 9
DAY 13
SESSION 9 (2001)
Creepy from start to finish, SESSION 9 is one of those films you see time and time again in the list of scariest movies ever, but you never got around to actually watching it. If you are not a fan of horror movies, then there is a big chance that you’ve never heard of it. And that’s a shame because SESSION 9 is an eerie film that anyone who enjoys haunting stories will find at the very least interesting.
This movie has an exciting ending that I’m going to spoil a few paragraphs below, so if you have not seen this movie procede at you own risk. You’ve been warned.
Let’s start things off with a brief synopsis of the film for your convenience:
A tale of terror when a group of asbestos removal workers starts work in an abandoned insane asylum. The complex of buildings looms up out of the woods like a dormant beast. Grand, imposing…abandoned, deteriorating. The residents of Danvers, Massachusetts, steer well clear of the place. But Danvers State Mental Hospital closed down for 15 years is about to receive five new visitors…
In short, five guys have to clean up a freaky insane Asylum that has been abandoned for 15 years. Cool set up, but not terribly original, right? Well, I don’t think the set up is the strongest part of the film, horror sometimes plays with different rules than other stories. Horror is about freaking you out, about eerines floating around in the air, and this film does a great job creating a building tension that will come to a climactic burst… eventually.
With this film, I want to talk about two things. First is the structure, you might think that A24 invented this modern take on horror that slowly builds and ends up exploding at the end like THE WITCH or HEREDITARY, but you’d be wrong. This structure has been part of scary movies for ages, and this film is an excellent example of it.
For two-thirds of the film we linger with the cleaning crew, we get to know them. We realize that their work is getting on their nerves, not only because they are in an insane asylum, but because they deal with asbestos. Any of them could be dead in the next five years, and they know it. This stress is slowly eating their nerves out; we see the build up inside them. Then in the last third of the film, we look at the consequences of stress that’s been building up for decades. How much pressure can you handle before you crack completely?
The second thing I want to go over is the other story playing within this one. Yes, there are two stories in this movie.
At some point one of the workers finds a set of tapes where therapy sessions of a psychotic patient have been recorded. This ‘sessions’ somewhat echo what’s going on in the present with the workers. But we never get flashbacks of the other story, we only hear the tapes, and there’s something about those disembodied voices telling a story that is inherently creepy. It just gets you.
The patient interviewed has multiple personalities, and the doctor is talking to them to understand a crime that happened when the patient was still a child.
Eventually both stories come to an explosive end, in the present, we realize that one of the workers has gone insane and murders every single guy in the crew. But in the tapes, we hear how one of the personalities of the patient takes over and tells the doctor how it murdered the patients family. In a last bit of terror, the voice doesn’t seem to be just an extra personality, but a conscious and independent being which living inside her. Then it’s implied that ‘it’, the voice, was the one also responsible for the murders in the present.
The last words of the final session linger in the air just before the credits roll.
Doctor: Where do you live?
The Voice: I live in the weak and the wounded.
Tomorrow: AUDITION (1999)
Yesterday: VERONICA (2017)
