10 Horror Movies That Fill You With Dread
9. Session 9
In Session 9, a crew of workmen rock up to an abandoned psychiatric hospital in order to remove asbestos from the building. What could possibly go wrong there?
Directed by Brad Anderson, who’d later make the haunting The Machinist, this is a cleverly laid out and well acted psychological horror whose true dread comes from uncertainty. We know full well that the scenario is ripe for all manner of terrors - we just don’t know exactly which will be deployed.
The structure comes from a box of tapes discovered by one of the workers. It contains therapeutic interviews with a former patient, suffering a violent form of dissociative identity disorder. From there, Anderson carefully blends slasher tropes with the more psychological approach; a killer is on the loose, but we can’t quite be sure of the who, how, or why.
Anderson is eager to give the audience something to mull over, and rides a fine line between the supernatural and the psychiatric.