Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent, Unsettling Horror Movie
Review: _Session 9_ is truly an overlooked little gem of a film. Just caught the DVD the other night and this is one scary, disturbing movie. The setting, the abandoned Danvers State Mental Hospital, an ACTUAL place, is one of the all-time great settings for a horror film. Just walking around it is enough to send chills up a person's spine. On one of the commentary tracks, star Peter Mullen says it really wasn't very hard to get in character, as the whole place is ... creepy."Mullen plays the leader of a group of men employed to remove asbestos and other toxic substances from the building, in preparation for its use as a public administration building. Desperate for the job, he agrees to do it in a weeks' time and he and the four men under him are under a great deal of stress to get the job done. If they're successful, they'll receive a $10,000 bonus. The film follows them through each day of that stressful week as they get progressively more and more stressed out and as one of their number mysteriously disappears. This was an excellent, scary film. It has the same sort of unsettling vibe as _The Blair Witch Project_. There isn't a whole lot happening, until the gruesome conclusion, but just the atmosphere and the tension will keep you riveted to the screen. The DVD includes a bunch of great extras, including a whole deleted subplot, complete with directory commentary, as well as a section of storyboards to screen, and a brief look at the actual hospital where the movie was filmed. It's too bad this didn't get more attention when it was in theaters, but now that it's on video, here's your chance!
Rating:
Summary: Best of the recent Scare Flicks
Review: The scares maybe few and far between, but what makes Session 9 so convincing is the growing sense of terror lurking in the dark bowels of a deserted Mental Asylum. Shots of empty patient's chairs rocking back and forth at the end of a tunnel. Shadows chasing men into corridors where there's no light. A true pyschological horror film. One to watch alone at night. Miles ahead of recent scare flicks. 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best settings ever for a Gothic
Review: The actual abandoned Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts is a fantastic Gothic revival pile of a building; it is mostrously oversized, larger than you'd think any such building would have a right to be, and makes an absolutely wonderful setting for this very sophisticated Gothic chiller. Four workers on a hazmat team have one week to remove the asbestos and other hazardous waste products from the abandoned state hospital, with its miles of ugly rotting corridors and empty rooms; by the end of the film there are fewer of the team than when we started. This is the standard set-up for a Gothic film (think THE SHINING, the orginal HAUNTING, the first ALIEN), but the unusualness of the hospital, the exceptionally fine performances, and the sophisticated script set this in nearly as high the same class as those aforementioned Gothic classics. The screenwriters give you so many fine red herrings that the ending works quite well. Peter Mullan gives a superb performance as the member of the hazmat team who most engages the audience's sympathies (though his Scots accent is at times a bit impenetrable). The cinematography is exceptionally and beautifully creepy.
Rating: 
Summary: a bit biased and overrated
Review: i was sorely disappointed after watching this movie. after reading all of your reviews,i thought it was gonna be one of the greatest suspense/horror movies i have ever seen. but that was far from the case. it wasnt even the slightest bit scary, although the building itself is pretty spooky.i guess i was expecting more of a ghost aspect, but that wasnt really what the movie was about, and that kind of ruined it for me. its definitely a psychological movie, but they made the whole ending too confusing.if your more of a fan of psychological movies and not true suspense or horror, then check this one out, otherwise, steer clear.
Rating:
Summary: Wow.. I'll be sleeping with the lights on
Review: Session 9 is definitely a must see - my boyfriend and I waited about 9 months for this movie to come out on video... after all that time and all the anticipation, I was really worried I'd be let down and disappointed. I wasn't! This film is superb in my eyes - of course it's not perfect and they could have elaborated better on many details, BUT I can't think of any movie that's perfect. I do have to say, if you're into slasher films, this isn't one for you. This is more of a psychological/paranormal type of horror flick (my favorite kind). It'll definitely leave you with something to think about.
My boyfriend runs a huge website for Ohio about "haunted" and abandoned buildings ... so we always go explore them alone at night... after seeing this movie, I don't know if I'll ever step foot into any of those places ever again.
Movies rarely ever scare me, but this one did it's job - It's now my favorite horror film. :) Man, it's fun to be scared!
Rating:
Summary: you'd have to be crazy to hate this movie
Review: Session 9 is a wonderfully atmospheric horror film spiked with fantastic performances.
While the plot is a simple variation on the haunted house tale, in this case a haunted asylum, the intense and disturbing mood of the piece makes all the difference.
By using Hazmat workers(those who know and work with decay and death) the director/writer offers us a refreshing look at things that go bump in the night and day.
The cast is superb , as is the lensing and screenplay. The only gripe one could have is with the sudden shift of events at the end, but we are more then rewarded with the final fade out.
In total, an engrossing chiller for those looking for an intelligent substitute to the nonsense of Scream and Blair Witch.
Rating:
Summary: True horror
Review: Starring Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Josh Lucas, Brendan Sexton III, Steve Gevedon, and Paul Guilfoyle. Written by Brad Anderson & Steve Gevedon. Directed by Brad Anderson. Shot in the real-life abandoned Danvers mental hospital near Boston (most of what you see in the movie is as the crew found it). SESSION 9 is one the most horrifying movies of 2001, and it's not even technically a horror film--at least, not as many people understand horror to be. In other words, there are no mask-wearing psychos or ghosts that jump out and yell "Boo!" The film works on the psychological level, taking you into the darkest recesses of the characters' minds as it takes you into the darkest recesses of the Danvers Hospital. That's true horror, because few things are more terrifying than what the human mind can conjure up, or what it's capable of under duress. As a result, even the stock genre devices--the character who wears headphones when he shouldn't; the generator running out of power at the wrong time--have their intended effect, because they seem genuine in the context of the story. The conclusion is somewhat confusing, but most of the pieces do fall into place upon reflection. The script doesn't rule out a supernatural dimension to the story, but neither is it necessarily present. Everything in the movie has a plausible explanation. Whether something otherworldly is happening is left to the audience to decide, and that's part of the fun...and if you find yourself scoffing at the premise once the film is done, note that the story is inspired by a true incident that occurred in Boston several years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional Horror ¿ Where¿s the Anamorphic Widescreen?
Review: Brad Anderson's moody, dark thriller Session 9 is a brilliant exercise in what horror films should be. Two parts mood and one part acting, the film is devoid of blood, ghost-story clichés like psychics and other such mumbo-jumbo, and even the "force" itself. It's an experiment that works and works astonishingly well, evoking classics like "The Haunting of Hill House" (which later became the basis for the wonderfully gothic 1963 movie and the awful 1999 remake) and "Rebecca." Session 9 is also unique because it involves a group of blue-collar, normal, every-day Joes, something you don't usually see in cinema much, let alone horror films. The action follows Gordon and his Hazmat Cleanup crew. Their job is to turn the Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts (a real, closed mental institution, it is worth noting, and the admitted inspiration for Lovecraft's infamous Arkham Asylum) from a health risk into a habitable building, and to do so in a week. The prize: a $10000 bonus that each worker really needs. But things begin to get in the way: personal conflicts between the workers, Gordon's less-than-perfect home life, a room full of files that contain recordings of various "sessions" with a psychotic patient, and... something else. Like other good horror movies, the fear is built not from things jumping out at the characters, but the sense of dread that slowly builds throughout the movie until the gut-tightening crescendo at the end. Credit goes three places for this: the actors, who manage to portray their descent with striking realism; the Hospital itself, with its rotting walls, rusted clocks, and abandoned wheelchairs and medical apparatuses; and the cinematographers, who skew each shot just subtly enough to create a sense of paranoid and "being watched." The supernatural force - if it exists at all - never makes an appearance, and there is nothing that jumps out at the characters to scare them. Instead, Session 9 offers such a sense of claustrophobia and impending doom that it stays with you long after you shut the lights off, which is what horror films are supposed to do. The only complaints about this DVD aren't from the movie, but from its presentation: there's no anamorphic widescreen (it's letterboxed), and the sound, while good, is not presented in a 5.1 digital or DTS track. In this day and age, it's almost a crime to not present a movie in anamorphic widescreen, especially a movie as great as this. The DVD is still worth the purchase; I bought it "blind" (without seeing the movie) and was very impressed.
Rating:
Summary: Never going back there, Ill tell you that...
Review: In the fall of 2000, 3 of my friends and I were given a tour of Danvers State Hospital by a guy who worked there in the early 80's. The entire building is boarded up with the exception of one entrance located in the machine shop area maybe 200 feet behind the main building, where the guards are on duty in a trailer.
When you enter the machine shop at the very back wall there is a small opening which leads to the subtunnels. At the mouth of the subtunnels, there are 3 to choose from and then they lead 200 feet up to the main building. Once in the main building, you climb up to the basement which is where a few of the scenes were filmed in the movie. The rooms where the most dangerous patients were kept, the shock machine room (where I tripped over a rusted shock machine lying on the floor) and the file rooms much like the one where the tapes are found in this movie.
The upstairs is not QUITE so creepy as light pours through the windows. The gymnasium/auditorium (where is where I went to an extras call for the movie The Proposal) is a mess.. spray painted, the floor torn up. Along the hallways, windows are smashed, the floors and ceilings have massive water damage (on the 3rd floor I opened a door to a patient room and the roof had caved into the room, thru the floor to the room on the second floor, thru that room and crashed on the floor of the room on the 1st) The directors office which was pretty much made of solid oak all the way around had moss growing on the gold colored rug.
Believe me... this building is CREEPY. I was constantly looking behind me, especially in the subtunnels where you could only see about 5 ft ahead of you even with a huge mag-lite. (I wasnt too pleased when on the way out, my flashlight died and I slipped on the mud and touched the asbestos and mold covered tunnel wall to catch myself)
When I heard about this movie, I rushed into Cambridge the opening weekend with 2 of my friends (one of which is a horror FANATIC) to see what it was all about. It was, like the building itself, creepy. I was a little disappointed with the ending but the acting, the script and my love of that place made up for it.
Definatly see this movie, you will begin to understand the chills I had for the 5 hours I was in Danvers State Hospital exploring. And if you ever get the chance, get inside with a tour guide (as you WILL get lost) before they tear the building down to make a hotel. Pay your respects to the patients in the unmarked graves down the hill as well and your tour will probably go a lot more smoothly.
Rating:
Summary: SESSION NINE is a must see. No, a must own!
Review: "Fear is a place", and it lives here in this abandoned mental asylum! Although I grew up in Boston (and S9 takes place not too far from here), I don't think I am biased to this fantastically CREEPY film! I've seen it twice now - in the theatre and on DVD and can honestly say that I am in love - with Session 9! The lone fact that it is filmed entirely in the (once active) Danvers Mental Hospital, places S9 far above the recent cookie-cutter Hollywood haunted house flicks (i.e. House on Haunted Hill and the like) this place is the real thing - no goofy computer generated scenes, just a group of blue collar workers and this amazing building (similar to the Overlook hotel in Kubrick's classic version of the Shining - It's truly the best screen vision of any "haunted house" EVER on film. If you enjoy a psychologically haunting film vs. a gore fest slasher flick, then odds are you will truly enjoy Session 9. A warning... Don't watch it alone... Really!!
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