THE FILM 4/5
“I live in the weak and the wounded…Doc.”
It looms up out of the woods like a dormant beast. Grand, imposing… abandoned and deteriorating, the Danvers State Mental Hospital, closed down for 15 years is about to receive 5 new visitors. Donning protective gear, the men of the Hazmat Elimination Co. venture into the eerily vast and vacant asylum that is filled with an evil and mysterious past. Rampant patient abuse, medieval medical procedure and rumors of demonic possession are some of the many dark secrets the hospital holds – but then so do each of the men.
I’ve always been oddly fascinated with abandoned structures. From the tiniest house to the largest factory (or, appropriately, mental institution), the idea of a place formerly inhabited falling into disrepair and becoming the home of a different kind of dweller—the homeless, the fugitive, the reclamation of nature in the form of burrowing animals and crawling vines—is intriguing, a little sad, but exceptionally threatening. Even the most mundane object—an old desk, a stack of files, or perhaps a wheelchair—take on a new, ominous appearance. These things that were once part of everyday life have been sitting dormant, waiting for their owners to come back and give them purpose again. That doesn’t apply just to these everyday things, but the structures that surround them. The more you think about it, the more you realize that an abandoned building is actually the saddest thing there ever could be.
There’s certainly a detectable sadness permeating Brad Anderson’s magnificent debut as a horror director, utilizing the abandoned Danvers State Hospital of Massachusetts as the setting for his film about a group of men each being affected by their interaction with the old crumbling building. Gordon (Peter Mullan), an exhausted new father, is on the verge of losing his business, the Hazmat Elimination Company. Phil (David Caruso) has recently lost his girlfriend to co-worker Hank (Josh Lucas), and has fallen hard on drinking and drugs to cope. Hank, meanwhile, has no real purpose in life, and he knows this, and he’s looking for his “meal ticket” to something better. Mike (co-writer Stephen Gevedon), who was once on a promising path to practicing law, didn’t make it through law school, and is now shucking asbestos to make ends meet. Finally there’s Jeff (Brendon Sexton III), Gordon’s nephew, a naïve innocent who simply finds himself in over his head, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time.
As for the less traditional characters, okay, fine—the most important character is Danvers State Hospital itself, barely dressed up beyond a shock therapy room and the plastic-covered walls. It effortlessly exudes menace, mystery, sadness, and terror all at once. Also doing a lot of the heavy lifting are the audio recordings of a nameless doctor and his patient, Mary Hobbes, who presents in three different alternate personalities: Princess, Billy, and Simon. Once these recordings are discovered, Mike becomes obsessed with them, playing them in order, beginning with session one and ending with you-know-what. As eerie as the hospital that surrounds them, these different voices come together to tell one story, allowing a glimpse into both the kind of terror and sadness that must have been rampant in structures like this during the early 1900s.
Peter Mullan, taking the lead, pulls off a staggering performance as Gordon, father to a newborn trying to fix his broken marriage as he’s also dedicating his time to a poisonous, crumbling hospital. His transformation from beginning to end is slow, but at the last stop of his journey, his final scenes are heartbreaking. Caruso’s Phil is a wonderful prick—the kind he excels at playing. A bit too overbearing at times, his weed-smoking, bar-dwelling presence leaves the viewer constantly on edge, and unsure if he’s to be trusted. (And his epic “Fuckyouuuuuuu” is already infamous.) Josh Lucas, in one of his earliest rolls, plays another kind of prick—the one even more obnoxious, but also the kind you can’t help but love. Rounding out the cast are Stephen Gevedon, whose knowledge of the history of the hospital provides the basis for an early disturbing scene (and which will sound familiar if you’ve seen the recent film Regression), and Brendon Sexton III, who offers the only weak performance in the ensemble, though it’s more inconsistent than outright distracting.
Brad Anderson, in his commentary track, talks about finding the location first and wanting to set a story within and around the infamous structure, but wanting to avoid the typical scenario in which teenagers break in to fuck around and end up in peril. His describing falling back on a group of men charged with clearing out asbestos simply as a device to set a story inside the hospital comes off almost as dismissive, which is strange considering that this same device is not only wholly original, but actually serves as an interesting dichotomy between the lives these men want to live and the lives they currently are. Being forced to “shuck fiber” is not only potentially hazardous to their health, but also represents to each of them just how low they have all sunk—from Gordon, who promises to pull off what would ordinarily be a 3-week job in just seven days, to the men who work alongside with him, all who’d rather be any place else. None of them are in particularly enviable positions in life, and despite their occasional camaraderie, leave them more susceptible to the influence the hospital has over them. As to what the hospital is doing to the men exactly—Is it supernatural? A form of cabin fever?—Anderson never makes it clear, which is just fine. Like the hospital itself, this thing that awakens when the men enter and takes hold of each of them in different ways is better left as mysterious. Like its patient room walls covered in old family photos and newspaper headlines, you’re given just enough of the story to reach its conclusion—and, like the ambiguity of all the awful things that may or may not have occurred in that hospital over the years, it’s better not to know, and it’s even more intriguing because we don’t.
THE PICTURE 4/5
Session 9 was one of the earliest feature films to be shot digitally, and while it didn’t offer the kind of ugly, streaky experience as the following year’s 28 Days Later, its DVD presentation left behind somewhat of a conflicting presentation. Now that the home video format can now properly present what was shot back in 2001, Session 9 looks night and day from its previous iteration. Still very much an obvious digital shoot, even offering a slightly sped-up PAL-like look, gone are the digital artifacts, streaks, and blur from the DVD. Session 9 looks great, boasting stability, and strong, vivid colors. Flesh tones are realistic and textures are defined. The hospital, in all its lurid glory, looks great as well—the peeling wallpaper and its surprisingly bright interior capture well and provide a lot of dynamism.
THE SOUND 4/5
Shout!’s decision not to create a 5.1 DTS-HD mix for this release was a curious one, considering ambience and music is huge in this film, but the 2.0 stereo track still does a fine job of immersing the viewer in all the bleak and unnerving environment that Session 9 insists on creating. The very unusual musical score by the Golden Climax Twins (which during one key scene doesn’t work at all—the subtitles call this scene “carnival music”) helps to set the mood at every necessary opportunity. The quivery audio recordings of the various sessions Mike listens to, along with character dialogue, sound fine and receive appropriate prominence.
THE SUPPLEMENTS 4/5
Clocking in at 45 minutes, the “Return to Danvers” featurette, newly created for this release, is a typically great Shout! retrospective, featuring interviews with nearly every major member of the cast and crew, except for David Caruso and Peter Mullan, both of whom we can assume were too busy putting on sunglasses to The Who and living in Scotland to participate. Refreshingly, there is very little overlap between this new featurette and the old ones recycled from the DVD. Anderson talks about what inspired him to make Session 9, and certain participants talk about the eeriness of the hospital, but that’s about it.
As for the older supplements, the audio commentary with director Brad Anderson and co-writer Stephen Gevedon is very calm and low key, but also contains a lot of information. It provides a thorough overview of the technical production, but also a handful of interesting anecdotes, including a really disturbing instance involving shooting a scene on the roof of the hospital and the strange impulse Peter Mullan had to throw himself off (which is repeated in The Haunted Palace featurette). Speaking of, said featurette doesn’t contain really information on the production of the film, but instead focuses on Danvers State Hospital and how the cast and crew reacted to shooting there. (None of it’s particularly positive.) The Script to Screen featurette does a side-by-side comparison of storyboards and raw behind-the-scenes footage of the shooting playing alongside their final version. Deleted scenes mostly detail a subplot involving a homeless woman living in the hospital that Anderson was very wise to cut.
The complete list of special features is as follows:
— NEW Return To Danvers: The Secrets Of SESSION 9 Featuring Interviews With Director/Co-writer Brad Anderson, Actor/Co-writer Stephen Gevedon; Actors Josh Lucas, Brendan Sexton III, Larry Fessenden; Composers The Climax Golden Twins; And Director Of Photography Uta Briesewitz
— NEW Horror’s Hallowed Grounds – Revisiting The Locations Of The Film
— Audio Commentary With Director Brad Anderson And Co-Writer Stephen Gevedon
— Deleted Scenes And Alternate Ending With Optional Commentary By Director Brad Anderson
— Story To Screen Featurette
— The Haunted Palace Featurette
— Theatrical Trailer
TECH SPECS
STUDIO: Universal Studios/USA Films
DISTRIBUTOR: Shout! Factory
GENRE: Horror/Thriller
RATING: R
THEATRICAL DATE: August 12, 2001
VIDEO STREET DATE: August 23, 2016
VIDEO: MPEG-4 AVC; 1080p; 2.35:1
AUDIO: English 2.0 Stereo
SUBTITLES: English
RUN TIME: 99 mins
DVD COPY: N/A
DIGITAL DOWNLOAD: N/A
REGION: A
OVERALL 4/5
A criminally under-seen horror thriller (another topic discussed in this release’s supplements–USA Film’s inability to understand what film they had and how to market it), this blu-ray release from Shout! Factory is the perfect reason to acquaint or reacquaint yourself with one of the best horror films to come out of the 2000s. Don’t look at the cover and dismiss it as just another haunted house kind of film, because it’s not that whatsoever. Owing more to The Shining and Don’t Look Now rather than Paranormal Activity or Grave Encounters, Session 9 is old-school, slow-burn kind of horror, made for (gasp–and starring) adults experiencing their own kind of horror–and more than just the obvious.
(Thanks to Rock! Shop! Pop! for the screen grabs.)
THE DISTRIBUTOR
Shout!/Scream Factory, LLC is a diversified multi-platform media company devoted to producing, uncovering, preserving and revitalizing the very best of pop culture. Shout! Factory’s DVD and Blu-Ray™ offerings serve up feature films, classic and contemporary TV series, animation, live music and comedy specials in lavish packages crammed with extras. Shout! Factory also owns and operates Westchester Films, Inc., Timeless Media Group, Biograph Records, Majordomo Records, HighTone Records and Video Time Machine. These riches are the result of a creative acquisition mandate that has established the company as a hotbed of cultural preservation and commercial reinvention.
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