Uncle Don’s Views of Nil Repute

Like the little engine, “Session 9” thinks it can, thinks it can,

thinks it can. The reality is “Session 9” knows it can’t. It can’t be

interesting, it can’t be scary, it can’t be original. It can, however,

use faded actors, a hackneyed script and the standard backlighted, dimwit

and half-wit photography in a pathetic attempt to evoke whatever emotions

it’s attempting to evoke, which is presumably horror.

The general idea is kinda cool. Let’s send in the clowns. A gaggle of

goofballs, a melange of decrepit contractors, failed lawyers, stoner

kids, layabouts and ne’er-do-wells are hired to remove asbestos from a

closed insane asylum. They’ll get a big bonus if they finish early, but

little do they know that most of them will be finished early. Our job as

movie viewers is to figure out which one of these yahoos is gonna go nuts

and waste everyone else.

This flick is more atmospheric than a hurricane. The moon is full, the

owls hoot, spiders are backlighted in their webs. For once, there’s no

rain, thunder and lightning (probably not in the budget), but the closed

asylum, with its turrets, gables and parapets, looms ominously in the

background. The voices come out to haunt. Creepy noises emit from blind

hallways. The lights dim.

And there, centered at the end of the paint-peeled corridor, sits a

wheelchair. Corroded and decrepit, its restraining straps deteriorated,

it calls out to our protagonist, Gordon, as he dribbles out the original

thought, “Something’s not right here.”

Well, no duh. While the director tries in vain to make “Session 9”

artier than the Getty and more stylized than Kabuki, there ain’t much

right about this flick. What are left are inane screenwriting, dull

direction, uninteresting characters, marginally inspired acting and a

general hope that there won’t be a “Session 10.”

So who’s our mass murderer? Gordon, the wife-beating contractor who

hears things? His backstabbing buddy who wanders around with a linoleum

knife? The failed lawyer who hears things and listens to such things as

the aging tapes of the ninth session of an interview with a patient with

multiple personalities? The wise guy who stole the girlfriend of the

backstabber and found the treasure of Sierra Madre hidden within the

asylum walls? Or maybe the innocent local yokel out just make some spare

coin, who doesn’t hear things but is afraid of the dark. Hell, why not

toss in Gilligan, the professor and Mary Ann?

These Lost Dutchmen flounder through the passageways of the asylum,

doomed, never to escape. At least their fate is easier than those of us

who had to suffer through 90 minutes of a movie whose credits, to

paraphrase Ambrose Bierce, were too far apart.

“Session 9” is supposed to be this year’s “The Blair Witch Project.”

You know: a low budget, grainy, illogical, ambiguously ended critic’s

favorite that is supposed to redeem the horror film genre. Instead we’ve

got a low-budget, grainy, illogical, ambiguously ended joke whose script

twists more than a tourist’s stomach on a small boat in large seas.

Meanwhile, our buddies who are supposed to be finishing a three-week

job in one week, wander around the loony bin, occasionally take a shot at

manual labor, but basically are nothing more than a bunch of Chatty

Cathies with too much time and not enough talent.

One of these clowns stumbles across a line of silver dollars strewn

across the floor like Hansel’s and Gretel’s crumbs as they lead him to

the obligatory mysterious hiding place where, from behind crumbling

masonry, untold numbers of coins tumble out like raindrops falling on his

vacant little head. This disgrace to the gene pool decides to come back

to bogart these bad boys. It’s dark, it’s dreary, and this Einstein

returns to the insane asylum in the middle of the night with no weapon,

no brains and no chance. Muttonhead here is the first to go. The rest

follow in short order -- thespian lemmings off a contrived cliff.

We, the audience, all of four of us, probably the largest crowd you’ll

find at any screening of “Session 9,” stumbled toward the light and

salvation from overrated pseudo-amateur movies aimed at yuppie

ersatz-auteurs. (Dang, that was a mouthful.)

* UNCLE DON reviews b-movies and cheesy musical acts for the Daily

Pilot. He may be reached by e-mail at o7 ReallyBadWriting@aol.comf7 .