Popular reviews

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  Review by Tony the Terror😼🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★★ 17

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  “I live in the weak and the wounded...doc.”

  
  It’s a bit nerve-wracking to rewatch a film for the first time since creating your Letterboxd account and putting it in your top 4. Will it live up to that honor? Was it really that good or was it nostalgia? Was I high the first time I watched it? Probably, but still.

  It’s been a few years since I watched this and over a year since I placed it in my top 4 so I was a little hesitant about rewatching it because I was worried it wouldn’t be the “perfect time” for what I claim as one of my favorite movies. Well, all that worry was for nothing because, after this…

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  Review by Larry ★★★★ 3

  You stick with this job too long, it'll mess you up man. It gets inside of you - the stress.

  This is probably one of the strangest horror films I've ever seen.

  It's cheap looking but superbly acted and directed.

  It's got a cheesy setup but turns into something you don't expect.

  It's got Horatio Cane in a haunted asylum.

  Does it sound good already? Well, a lot of people would be inclined to disagree. But ignore those Netflix star ratings, because I think Session 9 is a great little horror flick that I think is horribly underrated and unjustly criticized. Some of those complaints are valid but some I believe we're born out of viewers simply not getting what…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  40/100

  Having frequently argued that horror movies are scarier when they leave rationality behind (and that recent celebrated horror films like The Babadook and Under the Shadow suffer from being so blatantly allegorical), I now find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to complain that a horror movie makes no damn sense. On the one hand, Anderson and Gevedon provide multiple red herrings, suggesting that the entire crew may be influenced by some malevolent entity (strongly implied, by both parallel editing and cheesily booga-booga sound design, to be released when Mike opens the box of session tapes). On the other hand, Gordon murders his family very early on—an act that's telegraphed so blatantly and repeatedly that nobody could possibly…

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  Review by c h r i s🫀 ★★★½ 4

  “I live in the weak and the wounded, Doc.”

  An asbestos abatement crew in dire need of work win a bid to disinfect an abandoned mental hospital. During their cleanup, complications arise between the team when one member goes missing after his curiosity gets the best of him and another finds recorded session tapes numbered 1-9 from an inpatient named Mary, who suffers from having multiple personalities. 

  Session 9 almost escaped me and made itself very comfortable in my watchlist for many, many years. An early 2000’s low-budget midnight creeper with a haunted asylum setting that heavily relies on its somber atmosphere and psychological thrills; which all lead up to its pretty grand twist finale. This is the kind of…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★

  Crumbling domesticity mirrored in a decrepit, poisoned estate and thwarted masculinity spun out like analog tape.

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  Review by {Todd} ★★★★ 3

  "It gets inside of you... the stress." -Hank

  That job is not worth five dollars an hour.

  An asbestos cleaning crew spend a week working in an abandoned mental hospital and things go bad. Not just a psychological horror but a horror about psychology, Session 9 is a very slow moving film that builds to something intense and mysterious and kind of glorious. For about thirty minutes I thought that I might hate it but it begins to win you over with it's quirk and at times bizarre cinematography. This film wouldn't work without really great performances and proper direction because so much of the development takes place non-verbally.

  Great ending! Fun watch.

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  Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★★ 7

  Very suspenseful and creepy. Session 9 is more proof that you don't need an insanely high budget to make an effective movie. Just get yourself a great location and you're at least halfway there (what better horror movie setting is there than an abandoned mental institution).

  I'm glad Michelle introduced me to this underrated gem.

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  Review by theironcupcake 17

  I'm going to tell you a story.

  My great-aunt, by which I mean my mother's mother's younger sister, had four children: three sons and a daughter, all of whom are my second cousins. One of those sons/second cousins married a woman and they live a content life in upstate New York; I've met them only a handful of times over the last three decades, like at a bar mitzvah or a funeral. Anyway, this second cousin's wife has a brother, Richard Rosenthal. In 1995, he was an insurance executive who lived in Framingham, Massachusetts with his wife, Laura Jane Rosenthal, and their baby daughter.

  On August 28, 1995, Richard Rosenthal killed Laura Jane, a crime known in the Boston area…

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  Review by Fake Shemp 1

  Oh yeah let’s creep myself out in the wee hours after Raw

  Those tapes of that Mary woman give me the heebiejeebies

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★★ 2

  Cinematic Time Capsule
  2001 Marathon - Film #99

  You know what I wouldn’t do?
  I wouldn’t tell anybody about this…

  Five guys cleaning out an abandoned insane asylum. What could possibly go wrong?

  Welcome to Brad Anderson’s under-appreciated master class of how to pull off a low budget slow burn psychological horror film. Everyone knows it’s much scarier to suggest something horrific, rather than showing it, but so many filmmakers lack the patience and discipline to actually pull this off.

  Brad’s spiritual cousin to The Shining thrives on the ‘less is more’ school of filmmaking and doesn’t need to rely on the cheap CGI jump scares or pop-up hallucinations that pollute so many of today’s horror films.

  ”If it keeps up like this, we'll all be dead by Monday.”

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 2001 Ranked

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  Review by Cusack ★★★ 7

  What a wacky but entertaining little slice of paranormal horror. 
  This is definitely one of the creepier movies I’ve seen lately though it embellishes itself in being more try-hard than needed at times.
  Sometimes less is more. 
  This movie struggles at times getting its mind going in the right direction. There’s a lot of moving parts which don’t always flow cohesively.
  The acting is decent mainly from “failed” actor David Caruso and the always good Peter Mullan. 
  So overall, Session 9 is no doubt a good time but as a horror movie it’s middle of the pack; it’s got spunk though.

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  Review by sirvived ★★★★ 5

  A truly terrifying and effective psychological horror. It's one of those types that really creep under your skin and never leave. It has everything going for it, the sound design and camerawork are top-notch, the abandoned mental facility setting and those audio tapes are effectively creepy and very well-utilized. All those things makes this an incredibly great film. With every minute, it gets more unnerving and the atmosphere in this is extremely thick and unbearably suffocating that I had to pause, turn the lights on, and take a deep breath halfway through. It's got a twisted plot which unravels in a truly unpredictable way and is filled with characters that are written with a surprising amount of depth. I highly recommend this one!