Sightlines · reception

How Session 9 was received

2001 · Brad Anderson · Session 9 on Sightlines

The arc

It barely registered in theaters in 2001 — a tiny release, modest reviews, gone in weeks — but DVD word-of-mouth slowly turned it into one of the most respected American horror films of the 2000s, now a fixture on 'best horror you haven't seen' lists.

What’s debated

The eternal split: is it a slow-burn masterpiece of dread or a movie where 'nothing happens' until an ending fans still argue does or doesn't earn it?

Its footprint

The asylum tape recordings — Simon's rasped 'I live in the weak and the wounded, Doc' — are the film's signature, endlessly quoted in horror circles, and Stephen King has publicly sung the film's praises.

Where it stands

A classic cult object: the password-film of 2000s horror, the one genre diehards press on you with 'you haven't seen Session 9?'

Did you know? It was shot inside the real, abandoned Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts — the hulking Victorian asylum often said to have inspired Lovecraft's Arkham — and was among the very first American features shot on Sony's 24p HD CineAlta camera, the same rig George Lucas used for Attack of the Clones.

Named by the director

• The Shining (1980) — Anderson cited Kubrick's slow-creep, place-as-character dread as the model for the film's psychological horror.
• The Changeling (1980) — Anderson pointed to it as the kind of quiet, suggestion-driven ghost story he wanted to revive.