Session 9

• Session 9 was shot on Sony's CineAlta HDW-F900 camera at 24 frames per second, making it one of the first theatrically released features shot on 24p HD digital video rather than film. Reported budget was around $1.5 million.
• Filmed entirely on location at the real, disused Danvers State Hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts, in fall 2000. The crew shot amid the hospital's actual decay; most of the complex was demolished starting in 2006 and redeveloped into the Bradlee Danvers apartment community, with only the outer shell of the administration building preserved.
• David Caruso, cast as crew member Phil, was making a career comeback after his much-publicized early exit from NYPD Blue in 1994 had derailed his leading-man momentum. The New York Times' review of Session 9 specifically noted it was 'good to see David Caruso back in action.'
• Actress Jurian Hughes voices Mary Hobbes on the therapy tapes and performs all of her alternate personalities heard on the recordings, including Billy, The Princess, and Simon -- the personality whose chilling final line, 'I live in the weak and the wounded, Doc,' closes out the ninth tape.
• Despite strong reviews, USA Films gave the movie a limited release starting August 10, 2001; it grossed only about $378,000 domestically (roughly $1.6 million worldwide) against its production budget.

Gordon is possessed not by Mary Hobbes's spirit but by Simon, the hospital's resident evil entity, which the tapes reveal was the name of Mary's final, murderous personality. When Gordon tells Phil 'I live in the weak and the wounded,' he's quoting Simon's words from Session 9 verbatim, suggesting the entity jumped from Mary to Gordon through the building itself.

Nothing supernatural occurs. Gordon suffers a psychotic break triggered by the stress of his financial situation and new baby, and the hospital's atmosphere simply accelerates an existing mental illness. The 'Simon' voice is his own dissociated personality emerging, and the session tapes are a narrative misdirect designed to make the audience complicit in wanting a ghost story when the truth is far more banal and tragic.

The hospital itself is the antagonist, a sentient architectural presence that absorbs and replays trauma. The asylum doesn't create Simon; it collects broken people and feeds them back their worst selves. Hank's disappearance into the tunnels, Gordon's blackouts, and Phil's paranoia all stem from the building operating as a psychological funhouse mirror that reflects each man's specific weakness back at him until it destroys them.

An asbestos cleanup crew lands a job at the abandoned Danvers State Hospital, where a patient named Mary Hobbes left behind a box of session tapes documenting her fractured psyche. As Gordon, the crew's desperate foreman, starts unraveling under financial pressure and something far worse, his men scrape asbestos off walls and poke at rotting patient files. Phil finds the tapes. Hank finds the treasure. Something finds Gordon. The hospital keeps what walks through its corridors, and by the final session, the only question left is which personality is holding the knife.