SESSION 9 (2001) (Second Sight Blu-ray Review)

SESSION 9 (2001)

Limited Edition Blu-ray

Label: Second Sight Films

Region Code: B
Rating: Cert. 15
Duration: 100 Minutes
Audio: Uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: Brad Anderson
Cast: David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Peter Mullan, Josh Lucas

When I was a kid my dad was employed at the Willard Psychiatric Center in Upstate New York, a place which somewhat oddly loomed large in my movie-watching youth. With the nearest legit cinema over an hour away I would watch 35mm movies at the asylum in a recreation building called Hadley Hall, in it an auditorium served as both gymnasium and a 35mm cinema, there was even a bowling alley in basement - the place was very curious. As I recall they ran movies once a month there on Saturdays for the patients,, these were second run and vintage movies. There were usually a handful of other kids in attendance whom I assumes were kids of parents who also worked at the asylum. When I wasn't watching movies there I would often cut through the sprawling 500 acre grounds on my way nearby Seneca Lake for a day of swimming and fishing, the asylum was perched on a hill overlooking the lake, and there was a public swimming area nearby a dock right off the mouth of Pines Creek -  which offered some fantastic fishing opportunities, and in the winter there was a great hill that provided some excellent snow sledding. It seems strange now when I look back at it but the asylum was always there and a part of my life, a centerpiece of the small community, and my own personal movie palace of sorts.

I often wondered what life was like at the place for the inmates, the poor souls who lived there who I imagined were haunted by inner demons. I could not help but wonder what lead to their being left behind in such a place. Did they ever have hope of leaving, did they have family who visited them? My father worked in a more modern Hatch building, but I clearly remember the dilapidated red brick Victorian era buildings from the the previous century which were no longer in regular use, they were imposing and gave me the creeps when I walked past them. What primitive psychiatric horrors happened there, were they subjected to electroshock and ice bath therapies, did they perform pre-frontal lobotomies? In my youth I would wonder about these things, and I still do, it's haunting stuff. 

With those memories still very much intact I remember watching Brad Anderson's Session 9 for the first time on DVD, it brought all those weird memories back to me and gave it an added layer of unsettled nostalgia. The flick is a claustrophobic tale of five men who have been tasked with cleaning up asbestos at an abandoned psychiatric center, eerily similar to the one I grew up in the shadow of. Each of the men are struggling with there own problems, though none more so that Gordon Fleming (Peter Mullan, Children on Men) the owner of the small asbestos removal company who put in a low bid to remove asbestos from the Danvers State Hospital, which closed fifteen years earlier after mental health reform and a lawsuit. Gordon is a new father and is burdened with the threat of losing his business along with the rigors of a newborn child at home. Working the job with him are Mike (David Caruso, C.S.I. Miami), Phil (Stephen Gevedon, The Duece), Hank (Josh Lucas, Hulk), and Gordon's nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III, Welcome to the Dollhouse). Right from the start there is animosity between Phil and Mike, as Mike's former girlfriend left him for Phil, a fact that Phil never passes up the opportunity to rub into his face. Jeff is a newbie and a bit of dipshit, and Hank quickly becomes obsessed with reel to reel audio tapes he finds in a records room at the asylum, containing a series of audio recordings of therapy sessions with a woman named Mary Hobbes who was a patient at the asylum with dissociative identity disorder, who murdered her family on Christmas day. The creepy sessions are chilling as Hobbes slowly reveals her multiple personalities one by one throughout the course of the movie, first the innocent girl "the Princess", a young boy named "Billy", and the more menacing "Simon" who is reluctant to reveal himself.

As the team gets to work Gordon begins to slowly crumble under the mounting pressure, often stopping to make phone calls to his wife, you get the idea that something bad has happened and he is trying to make-up with her, eventually admitting to his nephew Jeff that he struck her after she accidentally spilled a pot of boiling water on his leg. He's also gegins hearing voices while working at the asylum, with the movie certainly playing a bit like Kubrick's version of The Shining in certain areas, the men slipping into madness under the spell of tge seemingly haunted architecture, with both Phil and Hank are making nightly after hours visits to the asylum pursuing their own private obsessions, Phil having found a stash of valuables in the wall of the basement near the mortuary and Hank is obsessed with those therapy session tapes, staying up all night an immersing himself in the multiple personality madness. 

The atmosphere is thick and tense and the setting is a stroke of genius, the dilapidated asylum is a nightmare and the crew needed to do very little to make it creepier, asylum's are creepy places and it's not hard to imagine someone losing their mind while working inside. Things begin to go awry when Phil goes missing after being attacked,  the guy's assume he's just abandoned the job but in quick succession several more of them men meet death at the asylum, murdered by unseen assailant armed with an orbitoclast, a tool used to perform lobotomies back in the primitive days of mental healthcare. 

This is a classic slow-burn slice of cinema with some sweet Kubrick-ian camera work, nice slow camera movements that glide along soaking in the architecture of the Victorian- era crumbling asylum. The way the movie plays out is slow and masterful, there's a deliberate descent into madness that plays along to the scenes of Hank listening to the therapy sessions with Mary Hobbs, which are among the creepiest damn things you will ever hear in a movie. It may take a bit to get a proper head of steam but sometimes the fun is in the simmering of the movie before it boils over, and when it does finally boil over the payoff is haunting and stays with you for quite sometime, good stuff. 

Audio/Video: Session 9 (2001) arrives on region B-locked Blu-ray from Second Sight Films framed in the original 2.35:1 widescreen. The 1080p HD image is nicely crisp and finely detailed to a certain degree, the movie was shot on a Sony HD camera in 2001 and the image has limitations but the blacks are adequately deep, colors look solid  and the appearance of the image is very pleasing overall. This release utilizes the previous HD master used by Scream Factory for their own 2026 release, provided by Universal. 

Audio comes by way of an uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 5.1 and it does the job nicely, well-balanced and crisp, those session tapes of Mary Hobbes are audio-nightmare fuel and the music has some nice depth which adds another layer of atmosphere to an already creepy movie with some subtle use of the surrounds, optional English subtitles are provided. The 2016 Scream Factory release offered only uncompressed 2.0 stereo, and I wouldn't say that the surround mix makes a huge difference overall I do appreciate the expanded sound stage. 

Second Sight carry over all the extras from the Scream Factory release beginning with a very good if somewhat subdued Audio Commentary from Director Brad Anderson and co-writer/actor Stephen Gevedon whom go into some good detail about the creation of the movie, production and stories from the set. Also carried over are a series of Deleted Scenes and an Alternate Ending with the option to view it with Optional Commentary by director Brad Anderson who speaks of how the scenes were trimmed following test screenings when a certain sub plot involving a homeless woman living at the asylum proved to be somewhat confusing. Also carried over are a storyboard to screen comparison, an on-set making of featurette and the theatrical trailer for the movie. 

We also get the 49-minute Return to Danvers: The Secrets of Session 9 doc with interviews from director/co-writer Brad Anderson, actor/co-writer Stephen Gevedon, actors Josh Lucas, Brendan Sexton III, Larry Fessenden, composers The Climax Golden Twins and director of photography Uta Briesewitz. A lot of what is brought up is covered in the original commentary but there's some great stuff covered, , including creepy stories from cast and crew of strange happenings on-set, including a fleeting suicidal thought and director of photography Uta Briesewitz nearly being lobotomized in a freak accident on-set with a dental drill! It  is pretty clear the place unnerved many of the cast and crew who seem to believe that there may have been something supernatural happening at the asylum. 

Another Highgate is the episode of Horror’s Hallowed Grounds with Sean Clark who visits the location which has changed dramatically since 2001, the main building used in the movie has been torn down, but he visits the cemetery and a few locations used in the movie, plus the episode features vintage camcorder footage of the building used in the movie from 2004 before the building was torn down, it is creepy stuff as he and a few others navigate the dark corridors of the asylum in near total blackness, the footage is rough looking but still very unsettling

The previous Blu-ray from Scream Factory was well-stocked with extras, but this 2-disc set from Second Sight is next-level. We get a bonus Blu-ray chock-full of new content beginning with a new Audio commentary by Mike White (of The Projection Booth Podcast) and Jed Ayres, and over then over three hours of new interviews with Producer David Collins and Director of Photography Uta Briesewitz, director Brad Anderson, Actor Stephen Gevedon, Production Designer Sophie Carlhian, Composers Robert Millis and Jeffery Taylon, and a video essay by film critic/author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. 

 While we were not provided the retail packaging for review (sad face) the 2-disc set includes a rigid slipcase with new artwork by Christopher Shy, along with a soft cover book with new essays by Charles Bramesco,Simon Fitzjohn and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas plus behind-the-scenes and location images

- 6 collectors' art cards.

Special Features: 
Disc One:

- Audio commentary by Director and Writer Brad Anderson and Writer Stephen Gevedon
- NEW! Audio commentary by Mike White and Jed Ayres
-  Return to Danvers: The Secrets of Sessoion 9 (49 Mins)
- The Haunted Palace (13 min) 
- Horror's Hallowed Grounds: Session 9 (20 min) 
- Story to Screen with optional Director commentary (10 min) 
- Deleted Scenes and Alternate Ending with Optional Director Commentary (10 min) 

- Theatrical Trailer (2 Mins) 

Disc Two: 

- NEW! Back to the Bat: a new interview with Producer David Collins and Director of Photography Uta Briesewitz (60 min)

- NEW! The Darkside: a new interview with Brad Anderson (36 min)

- NEW! Mike's Session: a new interview with Stephen Gevedon (23 min) 

- NEW! Invisible Design: a new interview with Production Designer Sophie Carlhian (23 min)

-  NEW! The Sound of Dread: a new interview with Composers Robert Millis and Jeffery Taylor (26 min) 

- NEW A Twisted Collage: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on Session 9 (20 min) 

Limited Edition Contents: 
- Rigid slipcase with new artwork by Christopher Shy
- Soft cover book with new essays by Charles Bramesco,Simon Fitzjohn and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas plus behind-the-scenes and location images
- 6 collectors' art cards