SESSION 9

Don’t know if this particular feeling is relatable but for me the scariest horror movie is always one that I have not seen. A movie that has been hyped up as terrifying, or has a scary poster, or a creepy trailer and that the very idea of the film is scary. These unwatched movies loom large in my imagination as the scariest possible thing in existence. Session 9 is a movie that appears on a lot of those ‘Scariest Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen’ lists and because of that it sat in the space of “Oh I bet this will scare the shit out of me”.
 
One of the best things about watching horror movies is to face that fear and find out that it was mostly all in your head. Even though Session 9 is a creepy film with some good scares in it, it’s not this unwatchable terror-a-thon that I had built it up to be. Also, David Caruso is in it and it’s hard to be chilled to the bone when David Caruso is around.

David Caruso stars alongside Josh Lucas (the poor man’s Bradley Cooper) and Peter Mullan (the poor man’s Brian Cox) and a couple of others as asbestos removers sent to clean up an abandoned lunatic asylum. In the asylum somebody finds a box of audio tapes from sessions with a mental patient. NINE AUDIO TAPES. FROM NINE SESSIONS. SESSION 9. THE TITLE.
 
It’s a very effective film that will send chills down your spine and part of that is because it’s shot on digital video, which is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because just like 28 Days Later it gives the movie a creepy immediacy but also just like 28 Days Later it looks like trash. Films shot on digital video from the start of the 00s all look the same as if you viewed your MySpace photos taken on a Sony Ericsson. At the time you were blown away with how you didn’t have to get them developed and now it is almost impossible to make out what you’re supposed to be looking at.

Where would I fit into the narrative of Session 9? I absolutely would not work a day of manual labour in my life, no thank you, so there is no chance I would be a member of this team of asbestos removers. I was thinking this could be a very short script of me being offered the job and turning it down – but instead I’ve thought of a way I’d end up at this abandoned lunatic asylum talking with these dudes.

IF I WERE IN ‘SESSION 9’ I WOULD: TELL PEOPLE I HAD TO DO A GIG TO THREE PEOPLE BUT THEY WERE A GOOD THREE