Brad Anderson’s first feature length horror film, made after two comedies and three years prior to his international breakthrough, The Machinist (2004), is a cannily constructed chiller, utilising a real-life location the site of the former Danvers State Hospital near Boston to great effect. An imposing bat like structure and home to the spiritual remnants of more than one hundred years of mental patient intakes, Danvers provides a perfect backdrop for Session 9, a palpitating single location tale of supernatural provocation.
An asbestos removal team, led by foreman Gordon (Peter Mullan), have been offered the task of cleaning up this dread-filled place where, it is rumoured, the pre-fontal lobotomy may have originated. Struggling with financial pressures, including the arrival of a first child, he offers an unrealistic time frame in a bid to secure the job. His crew consist of Phil (David Caruso), Hank (Josh Lucas), Mike (co-writer Stephen Gevedon) and Gordon’s nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton).
Keeping things interesting are the animosities that spark the group with Hank having recently stolen Phil’s girlfriend out from underneath him. On the flip side, Phil’s worries about Gordon’s overtaxed mind begin to bleed into vocal doubts about his ability to keep the project running smoothly as the deadline looms.
The integration of fictional histories with the real-life past clinging to every surface of this spooky place lays the groundwork for a premise ripe with possibilities. Isolating a rag-tag group with disparate personalities in a single location is always an effective tactic in horror fiction of all persuasions and perhaps best exemplified in the work of Stephen King for example.
One of Anderson’s most effective devices is the use of patient recordings that have been conveniently left abandoned for the perusal of Mike who stumbles upon them and becomes compelled to investigate their contents. In them he hears the disturbing saga of one particular former patient unfold; Mary Hobbes was a disturbed woman whose fractured personality could be broken down into four distinctive personas, each one with disturbing characteristics that mask a horrific past crime.
As a series of curious incidents begin to occur, the relevance of these sessions assumes sinister proportions. And yet Anderson’s film is a model of restraint. With a deft hand, and a determination to side track around convenient gore filled set pieces, he allows adequate space to breathe life into his main characters before the creepiest sequences are set into motion. The subtle work of cinematographer Uta Briesewitz, using high definition digital cameras, contributes heavily to the building tension, as does the sound-design like score by Climax Golden Twins.
I love the film’s casting, even though a peremptory glance at the cast list immediately created doubts for me about how much veracity the project could sustain. Caruso is an actor I generally have little time for; his one-note performances on TV glued together with a series of repetitive and annoying physical and verbal tics are laughably overripe at times. Yet here he provides a reminder of those early glimpses of talent before ego tainted all self-perception of his standing as an actor. He works brilliantly off both Mullan and Lucas for different reasons, acting as a counterweight against the extreme reaction around him.
Mullan too, who is not only a fine director in his own right but an actor more readily associated with smaller British fare, most especially Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe (1998), proves to be another uncanny choice for the lead. Always an intense, vigorous masculine presence on screen, he proves to be a remarkably apt lead for a horror film. Lucas as the carefree playboy who spies a paradise in wait beyond his incarceration in the workaday world and Gevedon as the focused, inscrutable Mike round out what is a suitably idiosyncratic quartet.
Session 9 is a largely forgotten work but one well worth hunting down. The apprehension it conjures in daylight is as genuine as the select moments Anderson holds back for plunging us into the cavernous darkness below Danvers. Only then will the sinister voices of the past manifest themselves in supernatural trickery that will have us guessing until the last frames. Genuinely chilling, yet admirably restrained (the alternate ending and deleted scenes tell a different and wisely excised version) this is one of the finest frightfests of the last decade.
I say:
A superb ‘little’ horror film that deftly builds layers of tension before peaking for what is a compelling, nail-biting final half-hour.
See it for:
The first-class work of Mullan and yep, I admit it, Caruso too.
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