I'd been promised by fellow horror fans that Session 9 was a superior psycho horror film. Sometimes when I'm made such a promise, what I end up seeing is another same-old meat-clever axe-killer goofball gorefest, but not this time. It turned out to be quite a film indeed.
Session 9 was filmed in the actual abandoned Danvers Hospital for the insane, a Victorian wreck that many believe to be haunted by the ghosts of the insane. This is the hospital where prefontal labotomy was perfected. The history informs the story throughout, lending a creepy-creepy authenticity to the whole show.
A Hazmat clean-up crew is prepping the historical building for restoration. The mood of the architecture infects all of them, but one in particular is being driven stark raving insane.
The script successfully keeps us from knowing immediately which one of them is most nuts, or merely hints of a supernatural agent at large, possibly imagined because of the building's disturbing history. The film holds back from gruesome effects until the climax, in part to sustain the suspense in the meantime, but also so we won't know too soon which one's the killer.
While the supernatural isn't required to explain what happens, there is certainly a chance that the multiple personality revealed in the ninth of the sessions preserved on audio tape was an actual demonic presence that inspires mass murder, & the last sentence spoken in the film makes this possible presence seem particularly ghastly.
This potential but not definite supernatural ingredient to the plot adds a wonderful texture that fulfilled my viewing tastes, as I don't often prefer stories that rationalize everything robbing them of unsettling mysteriousness.
It's as tasteful as psycho horror ever gets, all the more disturbing for being well written & beautifully acted (David Caruso heading the cast) instead of merely gore-FX driven. The culminating gore scenes are sufficiently graphic, but not what the success of the tale hinges on.
All the on-screen vicims are working class guys (other victms are audio only), so this film moves about as far away from the erotification of horror as films ever get, & delves instead into the depths of actual madness & human woe.
 The story of Citizen X is more of a murder mystery than a horror tale, based on the true story of Russia's most notorious serial killer.
The detective played by Stephen Rhea & his immediate superior played by Donald Sotherland are not in the least convincingly Russian, falling in & out of bad Rusky accents. But overlooking poorly sustained accents, the film was well acted.
Made originally for HBO, it is restrained in the bloodletting, but there are enough brief graphic details of stabbing & cannibalism & child victims, so that it does verge into graphic horror as much as HBO dared. But the main point of the film is the emotional impact on the primary detective who devotes despairing years to trying to catch the child-killer.
Max Von Sydow has a small but significant role as Russia's first forensic psychiatrist, who knows how "normal" & lowkey the villain is apt to seem to people in his daily life.
While I have liked tales of charismatic psychopaths from Norman Bates to Red Dragon & even Freddy, the impotent loserly wussiness of actual serial killers is of a more credible & realistic interest.
Overall Citizen X seemed a very minor film, but a successful one, mild compared to slasher psycho pictures, but a worthy break from the campier bloodletting of the cheeziest psycho flicks. Session 9 by comparison struck me as a major success for the horror genre & proof that gorey tales of psychos don't always have to be damnably lowbrow & kitschy.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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