As the clean-up crew works on the hospital, one of the workers continues to steal away to listen to the session tapes. Willard’s case is an infamous case involving a hypnotic regression that unsurfaced supposedly false memories of a satanic ritual that forever scarred the girl. As they work on cleaning out the hospital, one of the workers discovers some recorded therapy sessions (which is where the title of the film comes from) of a patient named Patricia Willard. As we meet them, we come to find that most of his employees are also going through some sort of personal turmoil themselves. The company doing the job is run by an Englishman (maybe a Scot, I’m not too great with identifying my UK accents) currently going through some family problems. The plot also starts off being fairly unique and original. The amount of dread and tension this film builds solely through visuals is really impressive and astounding. The camera is often set far away from the characters and is framed almost in the point of view of something watching them from a far, which is really creepy and unsettling. As such shadows move in the periphery causing a near constant sense of unease. Many scenes are framed with the character plunging into sheer darkness with only the light of a weak flashlight to illuminate their surroundings. The entire film is set in this decrepit, dark and filthy old hospital and the interplay of setting and the framing/lighting create a mood that’s wholly unsettling and effective. The film follows a group of asbestos removers as they work on clearing an abandoned mental asylum.
#SESSION 9 MOVIE HOW TO#
Aspiring film-makers should have to watch this film solely to learn how to create atmosphere and set a tone.
You’d feel pretty cheated, right? Well, that’s kind of what it’s like watching this film.īut enough about what’s wrong with the film, let’s talk about what it does right. To draw an analogy most people reading this should get, imagine if in the final 10 minutes of “The Exorcist” it turned out that the girl was faking the whole thing, she stops and reconnects with mother and we get some sappy, “Happily Ever After” kind of ending. Unfortunately it’s not even just a case of a lame ending, the tone of the film shifts so drastically in the final act that the film, when taken as a whole, feels disjointed and clunky. The ultimate problem is that pretty much everything that is done well and is original in the film gets dropped in the final act for a super-tired, lame climax. “Session 9” has pretty much everything it needs to be a great, original horror film. Unfortunately for “Session 9”, regardless of how great the first hour and a half is, the final 15 fifteen minutes forever sentence this film to being a mediocre thriller. As a result, it kind of retroactively ruins everything. Unlike with a meal where you can always go back and just skip dessert, you can’t just watch the first 4/5 of a film and then walk away satisfied, you have to eat that nasty dessert. Not that I’m still bitter about a certain birthday dinner or anything. No matter how much you liked the first two courses, the last thing you taste will be that awful, super-bitter and salty pudding. It’s like going out to dinner and having a great meal that comes with a terrible dessert. There’s really nothing more disappointing than a great film that falls apart in the final act.
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