It's rare these days that we find a movie that can draw from us some type of an emotional reaction. Even more rare is a movie that moves us so much as to envoke a physical reaction. After I watched Session 9, I literally had a twenty minute bout with the chills.

Session 9 is about an asbestos cleaning team that has it's back against a wall as they try to clean a huge abandoned mental hospital in one week. In the first half of this slow starting movie, we learn a good deal of information about the struggles of each of these five men. It's a fine set-up for a fast-paced and shocking ending. As powerful as the ending was, it left me wondering if the events that take place were due to the stress of life or the haunting of the hospital.

This is a Horror/Suspense film with little blood or gore and a cast of actors that you'll recognize from smaller roles in other movies. But this does not take away from the film's effectiveness.

There are too many movies that allow the audienceto just use the sense of sight during the viewing of the film. It's not surprising that these films are the ones that are often forgotten over time. It is usually the extraordinary movie that gets the viewer to use more than one of our five senses. I feel that Session 9 does this very well and that's why I highly recommend this film.

This movie gets you to use one of our strongest senses, the sense of hearing. Try an experiment: Mute your television and watch the first attack scene in Jaws or the shower scene in Psycho. Then watch the same scenes over again with the sound on. What is it about this shark attack or this stabbing that makes these classic horror scenes? Both scene's intensity rely heavily on what you hear as much as what you see. Your emotion is heightened because your brain becomes more active watching AND LISTENING to what is happening. In some cases it is the score of a film that provides us with ear candy but in Session 9 it is the use of the session tapes that brings us into the film.

If you have not seen Session 9 you need to rent it now. I think you'll be glad you did.

Session 9 Trivia
~It was shot almost entirely on location at Danvers Mental Hospital just outside of Boston.
~The tapes used in the film were allegedly based on tapes found in the hospital after it closed.

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