SESSION 9 (2001) (Blu-ray Review)

SESSION 9 (2001) 

Label: Scream Factory

Region Code: A

Rating: R

Duration: 100 Minutes

Audio: English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)

Director: Brad Anderson

Cast: David Caruso, Josh Lucas, Peter Mullan, Brendan Sexton III, Stephen Gevedon, Josh Lucas

Synopsis: It looms up out of the woods like a dormant beast. Grand, imposing... abandoned and deteriorating, the Danvers State Mental Hospital, closed down for 15 years is about to receive 5 new visitors.Donning protective gear, the men of the Hazmat Elimination Co. venture into the eerily vast and vacant asylum that is filled with an evil and mysterious past. Rampant patient abuse, medieval medical procedures and rumors of demonic possession are some of the many dark secrets the hospital holds – but then so do each of the men.

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 youth. With the nearest legit cinema over an hour away I would watch 35mm movies at the asylum in Hadley Hall, an auditorium that served as both gymnasium and a cinema, there was even a bowling alley in basement - the place was very curious. As I recall they ran movies once a month on a Saturday and would screen second run and vintage movies for the patients. There  were usually a handful of other kids there whom I assume had parents who also worked at the asylum. When I wasn't watching movies there I would cut through the sprawling 500 acre grounds on my way nearby Seneca Lake for swimming and fishing, the asylum was perched on a hill overlooking the scenic lake, there was a public swimming area nearby a dock right off the mouth of Pines Creek which offered some awesome fishing opportunities, and in the winter there was a great hill for snow sledding. It seems strange now when I look back at it but the asylum was always there and a part of my life. 

I often wandered what life was like at the place for the inmates, the poor souls who lived there who 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 building known as Hatch, but I clearly remember the red brick Victorian era buildings from the the previous century which were no longer in 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 there? In my youth I would wonder about these things, and I still do

With those memories still intact I remember watching Brad Anderson's creepy Session 9 for the first time, it brought all those memories all back to me and seriously gave me the creeps, 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 next to. Each of the men are struggling with there own problems, though none more so that Gordon Fleming (Peter Mullan) 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), Hank (Josh Lucas), 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 hit her after she accidentally spilled a pot of boiling water on his leg. He's also hearing voices in the asylum, the movie certainly plays a bit like Kubrick's version of The Shining in places. Meanwhile both Phil and Hank are making nightly after hours visits to the asylum pursuing their own private obsessions, Phil having found a stash of valuable 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 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 works, nice slow camera movements that glide along taking in the Gothic views of the 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. 

Session 9 (2001) finally arrives on Blu-ray by way of Scream Factory framed in the original scope aspect ratio. The new HD transfer is a marked improvement over the 2002 DVD from Universal. 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 nicely deep and the appearance of the image is very pleasing overall, definitely the best it has looked on home video. 

The only audio option aside from a commentary track is a English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0 and it does the job nicely, well-balanced and crisp, those session tapes of Mary Hobbes are nightmare fuel and the music has some nice depth which adds another layer of atmosphere to an already creepy movie. I am a bit surprised this one does not have a surround sound option, the eerie music score and sound design would seem ideal for a surround mix, but the stereo track sounds just fine. Optional English subtitles are provided. 

Scream factory carry over all the extras from the 2002 DVD beginning with a very good if somewhat subdued 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 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. 

New and exclusive to the Scream Factory Blu-ray is a forty-nine minute making of 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. 

Also new is an 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

Special Features:
- NEW Return to Danvers: The Secrets of SESSION 9 featuring interviews with 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 (49 Mins) HD
- NEW Horror’s Hallowed Grounds - revisiting the locations of the film (20 Mins) HD
- Audio Commentary with Brad Anderson and Stephen Gevedon
- Deleted Scenes/ Alternate Ending with/without commentary by director Brad Anderson (10 Mins) HD
- Story to Screen (10 Mins) HD
- The Haunted Palace (13 Mins) HD 

- Theatrical Trailer (2 Mins) 

Session 9 (2001) is a criminally under-watched movie, hopefully this Blu-ray from Scream Factory will bring it to a wider audience which it so richly deserves. The Blu-ray's improved A/V and worthy new special features make an easy upgrade, well worth the money if you're double-dipping on this one, so dig and enjoy one of the creepiest asylum movies out there, very few have done asylum-horror better or creepier, this is a classic slice scary cinema.

DVD Review: Vanishing on 7th Street [DVD + Digital Copy]

VANISHING ON 7TH STREET (2010)
[DVD + Digital Copy]

Release Date: May 17th 2011

LABEL: Magnolia Pictures
REGION CODE: Region 1 NTSC
RATING: R
DURATION: 91mins
VIDEO: 16:9 2.35:1 Widescreen
AUDIO: English 5.1 Dolby Digital EX with English subtitles
DIRECTOR: Brad Anderson
CAST: Hayden Christensen, Thande Newton, John Leguzamo, Jacob Latmore
TAGLINE: Fear Lives in the Dark


SYNOPSIS: From director Brad Anderson (Session 9, Transsiberian, The Machinist) comes VANISHING ON 7TH STREET, a terrifying, apocalyptic thriller that taps into one of humankind’s most primal anxieties: fear of the dark. An unexplained blackout plunges the city of Detroit into total darkness, and by the time the sun rises, only a few people remain—surrounded by heaps of empty clothing, abandoned cars and lengthening shadows. A small handful of strangers that have survived the night (Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, John Leguizamo and newcomer Jacob Latimore) each find their way to a rundown bar, whose gasoline-powered generator and stockpile of food and drink make it the last refuge in a deserted city. With daylight beginning to disappear completely and whispering shadows surrounding the survivors, they soon discover that the enemy is the darkness itself, and only the few remaining light sources can keep them safe. As time begins to run out for them, darkness closes in and they must face the ultimate terror.

FILM: Director Brad Anderson popped-up on my cinematic radar following the release of the intensely eerie 'Session 9' (2001) a film that remains one of the best of the early 2000's despite starring David Caruso who just irks me. He then went onto the first-rate psychological-thriller 'The Machinist' (2004) and the tense 'Transiberian' (2008) which chronicles an American couple's Trans-Siberian train trip which finds them caught up in a heroin smuggling operation. It's a darkly Hitchcockian premise as unassuming normies get caught-up in something extraordinary. Anderson's also directed several TV shows including several episodes of  'Fringe'  and an episode each of 'Masters of Horror' and 'Fear Itself'. I've thoroughly enjoyed his film and television work thus far so how does the supernatural 'Vanishing on 7th Street' (2010) total up?

'Vanishing on 7th Street' follows the events after a mysterious worldwide blackout, it's acutely focused on a handful of people in Detroit.  We open on theatre projectionist Paul (John Leguizamo) as he sits in a darkened projection booth reading about Roanoke, an English settlement found mysteriously abandoned in 1587. Suddenly the power goes out and he enters the theatre lobby to find it empty. Only moments before hundred of theatre goers crowded the theatres now Paul is unsettled to discover only their clothing remains as if their bodies had simply evaporated from within leaving behind a rumpled pile of laundry. We then meet Luke (Hayden Christensen) a TV news anchor who awakens only to sleepwalk through his morning rituals with little notice that the world has gone to shit. Sure, he notices that the power is out but little else till until he stumbles out onto the streets where it's pretty obvious that something apocalyptic has occurred. The streets are littered with clothing and wrecked automobiles. As he struggles to come to terms with what he's seeing a commercial airliner plunge nose first into the ground several blocks away erupting into a massive fireball. It's a scene that brought to mind 9/11 right away in my mind, whether that's intentional or not I couldn't say.

Three days have passed and we find Luke searching the darkened streets for sources of illumination. While he sits inside an abandoned car sifting through it's contents a stranger runs up to the him  pleading for a source of light only to be swallowed by shadows that seem to have a life of their own seconds later. That's what we're up against her folks, the shadows are consuming people similarly to what we saw in that 'X-Files' episode 'Soft Light'. Also, it seems the days are growing  shorter and shorter leading us to believe that eventually the sun will disappear altogether leaving nowhere to hide from the shadows. The only protection against the shadows is to have a light source in hand at all times.

Luke discovers a well-lit neighborhood bar, it's the only source of light we've seen thus far and is powered by a gas generator. There he meets a boy named James (Jacob Latimore. Once James takes the shotgun outta his face they strike up a friendship. Soon after they are joined by Rosemary (Thandie Newton) a distraught woman searching for her lost infant and the projectionist winds up at the bar with a head injury. The four end up sharing their stories, fears and theories which range from an End of Days scenario to the Roanoke connection. It's an uneasy alliance as our group debate what's the next best course of action while they wait out the remaining fuel in the generator and fend off the siege of deadly shadows.


The cast of 'Vanishing on 7th Street' is a nice ensemble piece. Much like Caruso in 'Session 9' I was wary of Hayden Christensen's participation but was pleasantly surprised here. Newton as a distraught mother was thoroughly convincing though you question her decisions at times, but mothers are prone to rash decisions when their children are involved so whattya gonna do? Leguizamo is an actor I've long enjoyed though I feel he's not given enough good material to work with it's no exception here, the dialogue is pretty clunky at time but it's a solid performance. Relative newcomer Jacob Latimore as James definitely held his own alongside the more experienced actors. No complaints in the acting department whatsoever 


The film's eerie shots of the desolate and darkened city were quite chilling though the film is definitely more claustrophobic in nature and Anderson chooses to focus on the 7th Street neighborhood given the film likely limited budget. The shadowy effects are a mixed-bag which at times take on a life of their own with tendril-like fingers reaching out of the darkness. The most startling  effect were the disembodied shadows we glimpse in snatches of light. Figures that have no physical body but seem to cast living shadows, it reminded me what we saw with Coppola's 'Dracula' (1992) only less fantastical and more menacing. The shadowplay worked quite well until the digital authoring became too readily apparent at times and took me out of the moment.


The film's apocalyptic elements brought to mind 'The Last Man on Earth' (1964) with dreadful shadows in lieu of vampires mixed with the siege elements of 'Assault on Precinct 13' (1976) and the unearthly feel of the j-horror film 'Pulse' (2001) but the film was too elusive for me to fully enjoy. The mystery just felt distant and unsatisfying. Anderson's previous films were well-crafted and tense and this just felt like a hastily assembled fright film.
DVD: 'Vanishing on 7th Street' looks quite good with it's anamorphic scope aspect ratio. The colors are vibrant and accurately represented though the film is decidedly dark for the most part. The details are crisp and black levels are consistently deep and inky throughout. The 5.1 surround is well utilized and the surrounds get some creepy sound design that enhances the viewing experience. There's also a nice selection of bonus content including an audio commentary, alternate endings that really weren't all that alternate and some cast and crew interviews plus a digital copy of the film.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Alternate Ending
- Creating the Mood on 7th Street
- Revealing the Vanishing on 7th Street
- Behind the Scenes Montage
- Fangoria Interview with Director Brad Anderson and Jabob Latmore
- HDNet: A Look at Vanishing on 7th Street
- Commentary with Director Brad Anderson
- Digital Copy


VERDICT: 'Vanishing on 7th Street' had potential to be a much creepier tale playing on our collective fear of the dark but the film is too elusive for it's own good. It's going for a subtle and mysterious but felt vague and unsatisfying like a story left untold. Honestly, this is a bit of a disappointment for me but I give it a medium recommend that's worth a video-on-demand rental. While it has its faults I must say that it did have me jumping at shadows while navigating my darkened house by the light of my ipod in much the same way as 'Paranormal Activity'.  3.5 outta 5