Session 9

Starring: David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon Director: Brad Anderson Original UK Premiere: 2001 Dvd Release: 17th February, 2003 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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Session 9 is a 2001 psychological horror film directed by Brad Anderson. The film is set around Danvers State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital & a national historic landmark that achieved infamy for repeatedly performing the prefrontal lobotomy. Danvers State Hospital has been closed for 15 years. Five asbestos strippers led by Gordon & Phil arrive at the asylum to make the building safe. Throughout the film we begin to see that each man has his own vice & personal demon he is coming to terms with. The men become tormented by their demons & the trusting & friendly relationships begin to break down. The film is softly paced & slowly reveals the psychology of the men whilst testing their relationships. Gordon is the owner of the asbestos stripping business & a new father. With the stress of work & the fatigue of fatherhood, he has argued with his wife & assaulted her. We learn that Gordon has had to leave home & is missing his family. Mike, played by Stephen Gevedon trained as a lawyer but dropped out of law school before achieving his potential.

This is how a horror movie should be done. There are no aliens, no men in rubber suits, no cliched celluloid psyopaths & definitely no bad CGI monsters. What we get instead is almost unbearable, terrifying suspense, a film that truly makes the most of its creepy location & will have you looking over your shoulder by the time the credits role. For maximum fear this should be watched alone, late at night with the lights down low.

David Caruso & Peter Mullan head an impressive cast, who have the unenviable task of clearing out an abandoned asylum. That should be enough to put the creeps up anybody, but it soon becomes clear that the asylums past history may be coming back to haunt them.

What could easily have become territory for a bad B-movie, instead becomes a tale of terror as the tension mounts & the truth is slowly revealed. The brilliant location is expertly used to instill in you a fear that something rather unpleasant is waiting just around the corner, but it never once resorts to cheap thrills.

It is shocking to think that with all the rubbish that comes from Hollywood every year, an original film like Session 9 doesnt even get a cinema release in the UK.

You do however get the feeling that it will struggle for a convincing ending & indeed it does fall apart a little in the final thirty minutes. That said, this is still a brilliantly understated pyschological chiller, that is part Blair Witch Project, part The Shining & it deserves to find an audience, hopefully it will find its home on DVD.

David Caruso is an American actor. Caruso was born in Forest Hills, New York. The child of an Italian-American father & an Irish-American mother, he attended Archbishop Molloy High School in Briarwood, Queens, New York. One of his first film roles was in 1982’s An Officer & a Gentleman, to be followed by a decade in supporting parts. His breakthrough role came in 1993 as Detective John Kelly as part of the original lineup of NYPD Blue. Caruso infamously left the show the following year to pursue a film career that failed to materialize. In 2000, Caruso had a supporting role in Proof of Life & from 2002 on, he stars as Horatio “H.” Caine in the highly-rated CSI spin-off CSI: Miami. Aside from his acting career, Caruso, together with his third wife, also owns a clothing & furniture store in Miami, Florida. He has a daughter, Greta. Posters Of Black Point

Editors Choice: Black Point, Session 9, Deadlocked, Body Count, Jade, Kiss Of Death, King Of New York, China Girl, View DVDology

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