Just Because a Room is Empty Doesn't Mean No One's There: "Session 9" (2001)

A single image that sends chills up my spine, from the 2001 film "Session 9"

This blog was originally posted on MySpace on June 10, 2008, and I am too lazy to write any more new ones tonight, so I'm reposting it here for your enjoyment.

Danvers State Hospital is a real place, and was closed by the state of Massachusetts several years ago.  Long before I heard of this movie, I had seen pictures of the abandoned building on websites that feature photography like that (I'm weird like that, I love pictures of deserted and abandoned places).  In the movie "Session 9", a Haz-Mat crew is hired to remove asbestos from the abandoned building, and each member of the crew seems to have their own issues which are made worse by the creepy atmosphere inside the walls of the place, which is still littered by relics of the former patients, as well as the equipment used in their treatment.

I have a thing for movies that play with your sanity, and this one certainly fits the bill.  It is all about the eerie building and what went on there, especially as heard on the tape recordings of a former patient which are discovered by one of the crew.  As he listens to these tapes (the last one is, of course, session 9) we are exposed to what may be a falsely repressed memory, a serious case of schizophrenia, or perhaps even demonic possession).  The tension builds up and though there is some (typical) blood and gore in the last fifteen minutes or so (which seems out of place after everything else that has all been so internal), the main feeling that stays with you after the movie is one of unease.  After all, isn't the mind really the scariest place of all?

I know that the sound of a strangely calm voice saying "Hello Gordon" will stay with me for years, coming to visit me in the middle of sleepless nights along with other pieces of memorabilia that I've collected over the years: the hearse driver with the leering grin in "Burnt Offerings", the woman with long red hair rising out of a pond in her Victorian-era wedding dress in "Let's Scare Jessica to Death", the stick men hanging in the trees in "the Blair Witch Project", the floating vampire boy scratching at the window in "Salem's Lot" and that quick as a flash deathmask face from "The Exorcist".  I'm 37 years old.  And these things all still have the power to make me feel like a 5 year old, with the covers pulled up over my head, so whatever is there in the room with me, just maybe, won't be able to get me.  Sleep tight!!!