Irish immigrant Gordon (Peter Mullan) heads a company specialising in asbestos removal together with his partner and confidant Phil (David Caruso). Upon agreeing on performing a two week job within just over 7 days to renovate a two-wing derelict asylum in order to receive a hefty bonus Gordon hires additional help in college drop-out Mike (Stephen Gevedon), nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III) and laid-back Hank (Josh Lucas), who recently stole Phil's girl. When work commences at the old mansion a sense of eeriness creeps in, especially after Hank goes missing...
Filmed with toned down colours and an apparently purposeful semi-professional fashion "Session 9" retreats from the overly flashy scare tactics employed by modern-day horrors, instead offering a slowly developing sense of madness and subtle dread hiding around the corner. With ipso facto frights few and far between with minimal gore occupying screen time the focus in placed on development of characters and story. Horror isn't brought about by loud noises, camera jumps or other similar in-your-face excesses, but through a well intentioned creation of atmosphere, also helped by the gloomy pictures giving it a raw, rough feel. Music permeates in the background with a disjointed disturbing score encapsulating the dominating sense of disquiet.
Acting all-round may feel awkward, but honestly much more realistic than in most horror features, where characters are mumbling, at times featuring semi-coherent diatribes of workers with little interest in talking about emotions. The overall basicality permeating through the screen offers a much needed respite to the repetitiveness in the genre, albeit the general satisfaction from the story and its twisting turns is only mild with little in terms of a climax, offering instead a chilling, but underplayed, revelation. Just to finish on a downer that further explains my cut grade - for a bunch of guys supposedly working their buttocks off our five man crew sure do have a lot of time for aimless chit-chatting and wandering along corridors.
Filmed with toned down colours and an apparently purposeful semi-professional fashion "Session 9" retreats from the overly flashy scare tactics employed by modern-day horrors, instead offering a slowly developing sense of madness and subtle dread hiding around the corner. With ipso facto frights few and far between with minimal gore occupying screen time the focus in placed on development of characters and story. Horror isn't brought about by loud noises, camera jumps or other similar in-your-face excesses, but through a well intentioned creation of atmosphere, also helped by the gloomy pictures giving it a raw, rough feel. Music permeates in the background with a disjointed disturbing score encapsulating the dominating sense of disquiet.
Acting all-round may feel awkward, but honestly much more realistic than in most horror features, where characters are mumbling, at times featuring semi-coherent diatribes of workers with little interest in talking about emotions. The overall basicality permeating through the screen offers a much needed respite to the repetitiveness in the genre, albeit the general satisfaction from the story and its twisting turns is only mild with little in terms of a climax, offering instead a chilling, but underplayed, revelation. Just to finish on a downer that further explains my cut grade - for a bunch of guys supposedly working their buttocks off our five man crew sure do have a lot of time for aimless chit-chatting and wandering along corridors.