Session 9 & Danvers

I managed to hire a copy of the "Session 9" DVD from the local video store, after being unsuccessful sourcing a new one via my usual supplier, Amazon or Ebay!

It is more a suspenseful thriller, than a splatter horror, and the hospital was the real star with both interior and external shots - from the wide-open spaces of the rooms and passages to the dark, dank recesses of the basement tunnels and cellars. It doesn't resort to the usual practise of filming everything in the dark to create atomsphere, there's atomsphere aplenty in the sheer existence of the hospital!
Definitely concerned about the workers OH&S though and the number of breaks they appear to have, when supposedly working for a quick-finish-bonus.

The gothic style Kirkbride building, is part of the psychiatric facility in Danvers, Massachusetts that closed in the 1990s. This was the original structure built when the hospital was founded in the 1870s.



More than two-thirds of the building (and almost 100% of every other buildings at the former hospital) have been demolished. This irreplaceable example of 19th-century craftsmanship is now reduced to a shell of the central admin section and one wing section on either side. Condos are being built up around the site.