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Reader comments on
Subject: Re: Jaded reviewers
Date: Apr 4, 2002
I guess I'm the jaded reviewer in question.
I really appreciate all the people who have written about how much they liked "Session 9." I agree to the extent that I think it was good to see a horror movie that was just about people and psychology, not talking dolls and guys with razor blades on their fingers and slashed-up teen girls.
I guess what I didn't like was that ultimately the movie was just about somebody killing people left and right for what seemed to me like no coherent reason. With the setup that the movie had, I really thought the emphasis would be on the strange case from the past, and maybe the crew would figure out some long-buried mystery about the weird sessions on the tapes. They didn't need to have any body count in the present at all. Instead, it seemed to devolve into yet another slasher picture when it could have been a real mind-bender.
And can anybody explain why the killer (trying not to give away who it is) snapped? I mean, I don't think stress is a good enough explanation, and he didn't have any history with the mental hospital as far as I can remember. If somebody has an idea about that, I'd be interested.
-- Joshua
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Jaded reviewers
I'm tired of reading reviews written by seen-it-all, jaded reviewers who seem to have forgotten what it's like to actually go into a movie and watch it for what it is instead of looking for every little thing that could possibly be wrong with it.
I'd never heard of "Session 9" before a month ago. I saw it sitting on the shelf, picked it up and read the description on the back and thought it sounded good. Apparently, so did a lot of other people because it took me nearly a month of waiting before it was ever available.
I watched it with my wife, in the dark, and it scared the living crap out of us both. Horror movies these days, for the most part, are pure crap. This one is different. It pulled off the big scare and built mega tension without the aid of any fancy CG work. The movie doesn't so much scare you as it makes you scare yourself, using basic human fears such as fear of the dark and claustrophobia to create the atmosphere. The excellent soundtrack only intensifies the tension.
The session tapes are an integral part of the movie, almost a sub-story, but they serve to illustrate the parallels between Gordon's and Mary's situations. Both were hurt by someone close to them accidentally and both reacted to the events in the same way.
What I came away with from the movie was that it may be entirely possible that "Simon" was a possessive demon rather than an alternate personality. His was the only voice that didn't sound like a simple variation of Mary's authentic voice. When asked the question, "Where do you live?", the other alters named body parts such as the eyes and tongue. Simon, when asked the same question, answered, "I live in the weak and the wounded.", implying that he/it could live in anyone who fit that description and was not confined to Mary's body only.
The very ending, when Gordon's flashbacks are fully realized, left me feeling more disturbed than any movie ever has. And it did it through aural cues only rather than SHOWING the audience what had happened. How the reviewer came to the conclusion that Gordon was a "crazed maniac hacking people to bits for no reason" is beyond me. In my opinion, the gore factor in this movie is extremely low.
The cast was great and all of them created believable characters. I rate the movie 5 out of 5. Go rent it today. The DVD has a featurette about Danvers Asylum that when watched BEFORE the movie, will enhance the movie for you. . .at least it did for me.
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Comment index:
» Re: Jaded reviewers « from Joshua Tanzer, Apr 4, 2002
GONE from CrapBall, Sep 1, 2006
Flaws from Chefboyartie, Jun 24, 2008
» Re: Jaded reviewers « from Joshua Tanzer, Apr 4, 2002
GONE from CrapBall, Sep 1, 2006
Flaws from Chefboyartie, Jun 24, 2008
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