Session 9 (2001)

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2018) It doesn’t take much more than an abandoned hospital, sombre cinematography and a few crazy characters to have the basics of a moody horror movie. Alas, Session 9 doesn’t go any further than that to actually deliver anything memorable. While David Caruso is fine in the lead role, other actors just pass through the film with indifferent performances. Plot-wise, this isn’t anything we’ve seen before, and while one late-movie twist works fine, the rest seems to recycle familiar material. I’m really not a big fan of the early-2000s digital cinematography, which is as muddy as anything done at the time using those tools could be. Writer/director Brad Anderson has done much better (The Machinist) and much worse (The Vanishing on the Street), so Session 9 is a middle-of-the-pack early effort for him. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to say about the film. It operates in a specific sub-genre, using defined elements and never going outside that zone. Fans of that kind of stuff will like it, while others may feel impatient at the way it advances, or rather doesn’t.