Been camping out in Joshua Tree and I have to be honest, I’m a little fried right now. I blame it on the sun. But the weekend was pretty fantastic! I hiked up things. And made a fire. And cooked food. And slept in a tent.

I love Joshua Tree. Here’s a picture! Of my feet.

It was high up!

Tonight’s movie is another that had been on my “Need To See” list for a while before I finally watched it for the first time a couple of months ago. A group of guys removing asbestos from a terrifying old insane asylum. Sounds promising, right? Right!

Another short post here cause I’m exhausted. This month has been busy! But there are still some good movies coming up. I promise.

Session 9 – USA, 2001. Dir. Brad Anderson, Screenplay Brad Anderson & Stephon Gevedon. Starring David Caruso.

Thanks to Larissa and Rachael for finally making sure I saw this movie. We watched it several months ago and it was, well, intense. Not a haunted “house” in this one but Danvers State Hospital is like a haunted house on steroids. I really had to include it in this month.

Session 9 is about a group of contractors hired to clear out asbestos in an old, abandoned insane asylum. The building is immense and in disrepair, a dangerous place to be even without any ghosts. But supernatural or not, this building holds secrets and terrors the threaten to consume the men working there.

And the movie is great. It’s another movie that was maybe not exactly what I expected it to be, but what it is surpassed my expectations. What was it I expected?

Well, I mean, the remake of House on Haunted Hill takes place in an old insane asylum too. I thought it would be like that? No, not really. That movie was terrible.

But I did think it was going to be a more straightforward ghost movie. I thought there would be more of the expected, lots of ghosts wandering the halls, doing horrible things, and it would all end with a sole survivor barely escaping after a night of terror.

It wasn’t really that at all!

But it is a study in tension, an exploration of insanity and evil, and a good, complex story. The movie does a lot with a little, making the most of the location to milk the horror out of every moment.

It also lets us get to know these characters, who are surprisingly developed for really just being set up as blue collar working guys. They have history and relationships and the story is really mostly about them and their lives and how things have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

So working guy drama set against one of the spookiest, real life places ever.

I think that sounds like a great movie. And for the most part, it really is.