Session 9
Gordon Fleming is the owner of a small asbestos removal company. The stresses of work and being a new father are causing problems between him and his wife, Wendy. He is in a desperate financial bind and makes a bid to remove asbestos from the Danvers State Hospital, closed fifteen years ago, within one week. His team consists of Mike, a law school dropout who is knowledgeable about the asylum's history; Phil, who is filled with bitterness after losing his girlfriend and finds solace in smoking marijuana; Hank, whom Phil lost his girlfriend to; and Jeff, Gordon's nephew, who suffers from severe nyctophobia.
As Phil asks Gordon about his newborn daughter Emma, Gordon tells him that he and his wife Wendy are so tired. The new baby keeps him up at night.
As work begins inside the asylum, Mike finds a box containing nine taped sessions with a patient named Mary Hobbes, who had dissociative identity disorder. The purpose of the sessions, which Mike becomes increasingly engrossed in, is to unveil what happened on Christmas night in Lowell, her hometown, twenty-two years before. One of her personalities, "the Princess", is childlike and innocent, knowing only the Christmas presents - a china doll for Mary and a knife for her brother, Peter - and that they played hide-and-seek after their parents went to bed. Another personality, "Billy", is both childlike and protective. He lives "in the eyes" and saw what happened, but refuses to let Mary find out. The doctor repeatedly asks about the third personality, "Simon", whom "the Princess" knows nothing about and "Billy" fears.
In the tunnels beneath the property, Hank finds a cache of antique Morgan dollar coins and other silver items, scattered from the crematory nearby. He returns that night to steal the artifacts and finds an orbitoclast. He hears odd sounds in the tunnels and discovers an empty peanut butter jar. He hears someone behind him and tries to escape the tunnels, but he is attacked by an unseen assailant. The next morning, the other four learn that Hank abruptly broke up with his girlfriend and left town; the four speculate about the possibility that Hank finally won some money in a lottery. Gordon, who frequently calls his wife and saw Phil speaking to two unknown men during one telephone call, suspects that Phil had something to do with Hank's disappearance, causing tension between the group.
At one point Gordon goes outside the building into the old garden, where several tombstones from patients who died during their stay at the asylum can be seen. As Gordon sits on a part of a tree trunk, he tries to call his wife again. He quickly puts his mobile phone away when he sees Jeff coming to him. Jeff wants to thank Gordon for giving him a chance at this job. Neither of the two men can see the tombstone that is half hidden under the trunk; it has the same number as Mary Hobbes' room. Gordon later opens up to Phil and admits that he hit Wendy after she accidentally spilled a pot of boiling water on his leg; he has been trying to apologize over the phone ever since. His leg is badly blistering and hurting, but he continues with the work.
Phil calls in another worker, Craig McManus, to assist with the job that is now behind schedule after Hank's disappearance. Phil tells Mike that he thinks Gordon has become a liability and reveals to Mike that Gordon admitted to slapping his wife.
Jeff finds Hank alive, but acting strangely unresponsive to Jeff's questions about where he has been. Jeff runs to tell the others, but Hank is gone again when the group returns. They split up to find Hank, but instead of looking, Mike quickly returns to the session tapes which he now feels compelled to finish listening to. In the taped recordings "Billy" refuses to awaken "Simon," admitting to the doctor only that "Simon" was behind whatever happened that night. During the search, Phil finds Hank in one of the tunnels, half-naked, wearing sunglasses and muttering to himself. The power goes out at that point, trapping Jeff in a pitch-black tunnel and also stopping the ninth session tape short. Mike restores the power and the ninth session continues with "Simon," the same voice Gordon has been hearing since the job began, taking over.
"Simon" reveals that Peter scared Mary while they were playing and she fell on her doll, breaking it and badly scarring herself. "Simon" then took Mary over killing Peter and their parents with the new knife.
As the recording continues, Phil finds Gordon in Mary's former hospital room, staring at his own wedding photos stuck to the wall. A shaken Jeff flees to the van, where he also is attacked by an unseen assailant.
The next day, Craig arrives at the asylum. Gordon finds Hank, with the orbitoclast protruding from his eye, wrapped in plastic in one of the larger rooms. Phil also appears and tells Gordon to "wake up" when Gordon accuses Phil of being the one who attacked the others. As Craig finds them, it is shown that Phil's presence was in actually only Gordon's mind. Possessed by "Simon," Gordon enters a dissociative state and kills Craig with the orbitoclast after removing it from Hank's eye socket. It is revealed that Gordon, in the disassociated state, attacked Hank that night in the tunnels. When found by Phil in Mary's room, Gordon is also shown killing Phil before finding and killing Mike and Jeff. It is also revealed that Gordon did not just slap his wife, but killed her, the family dog and their baby after the pot of boiling water was spilled on him.
Gordon finally breaks down and realizes he has killed his family and all his friends. He uses his cell phone, which is broken, to apologize to an unhearing and already dead Wendy.
The film ends with the doctor asking, "And where do you live, Simon?" and "Simon" answering, "I live in the weak and the wounded, Doc," implying that those who are vulnerable to evil can be taken over and compelled to do harm.
dark, boring, suspenseful, murder, psychological, stupid, cult, horror, haunting, flashback, romantic