Oct 092001
 
two reels

A five-man hazardous waste crew take on a rush job of cleaning the asbestos from an abandoned insane asylum. The team consists of Gordon (Peter Mullan), who can’t deal with the stress of his new baby, Hank (Josh Lucas), a greedy conman, Phil (David Caruso), who holds a grudge against Hank, Mike (Stephen Gevedon), who studied psychology but gave up on it, and Jeff (Brendan Sexton), an inexperienced kid who fears the dark. As the others fall apart, Mike listens to tapes of a long dead patient with multiple personalities.

Session 9 is a low budget horror flick, shot on video without expensive cameras. Director Brad Anderson tries to turn the natural lighting, shaking shots, and 2-D look into style and partly succeeds, but after a while, it becomes tiring to watch. The lighting is the worst, but some allowances must be made for the budget.

It is a dense film, somewhat too slow, but packed with little clues to what is actually going on. Everything on screen could have a meaning, and most of it is left open. I have heard three interpretations of the plot (that it’s a simple case of a mental breakdown, that it’s about a demonic possession, or that it’s about one man and his imaginary friends), and in each case, the person was absolutely sure he was right. I’d like to say that the multiple ways of seeing the story are due to the brilliance of the screenplay, but it’s not the case. The story is confused and no interpretation completely works (each leaves at least one contradiction); with a tale this complex and with the last minute removal of a subplot, I’d expect holes. However you take it, this is a cipher film, with all the meaning of your average jigsaw. It’s interesting to see how each piece fits together (that the fallen grave marker pertains to the interrogation room, etc.), but that’s all the theme there is.

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