Good morning, House of Madness residents:
Today I would like to share my thoughts on the ridiculously underrated Session 9, (directed by Brad Anderson) which also happens to be one of my all-time personal favourites. This movie chilled me to my core, and will always have everlasting re-watchability for me. The fact that I can bring up this movie to a friend, and them never having heard of it, let alone seen it, is not only a disgrace, it's a disservice to your eyeballs.
Story starts off with an asbestos crew hired to clean an abandoned mental asylum. No problem, they have a crew of 5, steady work ahead, and the pay is good. Slight problem; Gordon (Peter Mullan) is the crew chief, and in order to secure the bid, he may have made some promises which seem impossible to keep. One week for a job this size seems insane, but hey, they're at a mental hospital, so what the fuck. Not only that, his nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III) is a complete greenhorn, Hank (Josh Lucas) is plowing Phil's (David Caruso) ex-girlfriend, and Mike has higher aspirations than being an asbestos cleaner.
Work gets underway, and things start to spiral. Gordon not only seems pre-occupied, he at times seems to be on a completely different planet. Jeff isn't exactly fitting in, Hank and Phil are getting along about as well as Superman and General Zod, and Mike found some weird tapes when he went to go find the breaker after the power failed, and the tapes have taken precedence over the asbestos work.
Gordon seems even more distant, and after a long day can't seem to bring himself to go inside his own home where wife and new baby await. We are given glimpses of what sounds like a big argument, and hot water being spilled on someone, while Gordon relives this moment in his head inside his work van across the street from his house. Real normal, Gordon. Well, back to work!
As the time elapses, things aren't exactly going to plan. Phil finds out the timeline Gordon promised, and loses his shit. No problem, Phil knows a guy that can come and give an extra set of hands, and things seem to settle down. Mike is spending all of his time with these tapes he's discovered about a patient named Mary, and they're all labeled by session. Mary has multiple personalities, and none of them want to talk about Simon. Then we get to Session 9, and Simon makes himself known.
Once Simon is 'unleashed', we see things through the camera's perspective as if it is the evil entity which is slowly driving the crew deeper into madness. After a terrifying ordeal where Jeff got trapped in the basement with no lights, he overcomes his nyctophobia and calms down with some cookies he's found in the work van. Bye Jeff. Hank has found himself a treasure trove of coins hidden in the walls of the asylum, and plans to keep them for a rainy day. Bye Hank. Remember the guy Phil knows that is going to come help? Enter Craig (Larry Fessenden), and instead of walking into a workspace, he walks into a good ole fashioned bloodbath. Bye Craig, we hardly knew ye.
Now we are shown what really happened to Gordon's wife Wendy and baby, as he talks to her on his cell phone which clearly has no battery. Was Gordon mad before he got to the asylum, and the stress of the job pushed him over the edge, or did our good friend Simon that Mary's other personalities were too afraid to talk about, open the door to madness where Gordon's brain has succumbed? By his own admission, Simon lives in the weak and the wounded, but just how weak and wounded was Gordon before Simon arrived?
Madness Meter: 8.8/10
NB
