Horror house rules

>> Session 9 is a white-knuckle fear fest

by JOANNE LATIMER

As if we need any more reason to fear the loony bin, along comes Session 9. This present-day horror film induces white-knuckle fear for a crew of asbestos workers cleaning up an abandoned insane asylum. But it's not your standard-issue facility. It's a sprawling Victorian torture palace with its own morgue, isolation wards, and medieval therapy chambers.

The story is set in Massachusetts, 15 years after the Danvers State Mental Hospital was closed down by a scandal and budgetary limitations. The building is declared a historic landmark, so all toxic building materials need to be stripped from the interior before it can be renovated.

Hazmat Elimination Company wins the contract, under Gordon (Peter Mullan), and the race is on to gut the asbestos in one week's time to earn a $10,000 bonus. Not only is Gordon's business failing, but he and his wife have a baby girl who won't stop crying--so he's delirious from sleep deprivation and guilt. His crew chief (David Caruso) is an untrustable schemer who hates teammate Hank (Josh Lucas) for stealing his girlfriend. The voice of reason is supplied by a frustrated law student (Stephen Gevedon) and Gordon's impressionable young nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III).

Who's gonna crack? Can't say, but the pressures of working in the nut house unhinges the crew and provides a ripping good fright. Alliances shift. Scandals are uncovered. The law student finds tape-recorded sessions between a shrink and a female patient with something called recovered satanic abuse syndrome. She has multiple personalities, just like Sybil, and spooks us with her different voices.

Ghosts are at large in Danvers, we believe. Ex-patients return to squat at the facility, and there's telling graffiti on the walls. The electricity is dodgy at best, and Gordon's crew is constantly going to the basement to fiddle with the breaker. Bad stuff happens in basements, especially to disposable crew members, who are disadvantaged by their protective gear and masks. They're as afraid of ingesting toxins as they are of the asylum itself.

Director/writer Brad Anderson doesn't pull any cheap tricks. How often can you say that about horror films? He builds credible tension between the workers, whose personal lives are just as interesting as the ghosts in the attic. That's the crux of the film's success: Anderson knows that humans are more twisted than phantoms.

Mullan leads the mortals with a roundhouse performance as Gordon, a Scottish immigrant with aspirations. (Mullan ran away with the best actor award at the Cannes film Festival in 1998 for his role in Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe; he keeps exceeding expectations as both an actor and director.) Mullan and Caruso are great together, with more acting chops than their co-stars, but possessing enough grace to share the screen.

At that point, the pressure is on Anderson to live up to his casting. If the story is thin, the actors will have to try too hard. If the horror is milky, the asylum--another coup in the casting department--will be a letdown.

Anderson (Next Stop Wonderland) was flagged by Variety as one of the Top 10 Directors to Watch in 1997 for a reason. He ratchets up the tension without resorting to tired horror clichés. The psychological mess he makes is ultimately much more frightening than the gore. Isn't that the definition of a good scare?

Session 9 opens Friday, August 24