Session 9 began with a sighting in the Danvers woods - not of a spirit or a crime, but of a fearsome piece of history,  the Danvers Mental Hospital.

"I lived in nearby Boston for a while," remembers Anderson. I'd often drive by this tremendous place, the Danvers Mental Hospital, looming on this hill and it just seemed like such a dramatic backdrop for a movie - particularly a horror movie. It was built back in the late 1860s."

The imposing complex of buildings had been abandoned back in the mid-1980s. While parts of the property had been leased by the state in the intervening years (most notably as production office space for Nicholas Hytner's feature film remake of "The Crucible" in late 1995 and early 1996), the physical evidence of its unsettling past remained. Anderson says, "Our story was patterned after actual stories we've heard about this place, the patients, and the things that went down there. We wrote the script and tailored it particularly for this site."

"Scaring an audience is hard," admits Session 9 director/co-screenwriter Brad Anderson. "But horrifying them, making them feel genuine dread is even harder. That's why I think most of the 'scary' movies that you see now aren't really 'horror movies."'

But Session 9 is very much a horror movie, says actor Peter Mullan: 'The horror films I like are character-led. Everyone has a dark side."

It was a unique combination of promising characterizations, genre exploration, location shooting, and advancing moviemaking possibilities that brought the filmmakers and the actors together to make Session 9 in Danvers, Massachusetts in the fall of 2000.

Co-screenwriter and co-star Stephen Gevedon adds, "Brad and I have known each other for quite a long time. He asked me, in the winter of 2000, if I wanted to write a horror movie with him. I said yes. He had the idea of several people stuck in this location, and something awful happening. We came up here to check the place out - and realised that pretty much anything could happen there. It's a creepy place. The first time we came up - it was pretty overwhelming. The place is huge."

Unlike Anderson's previous films as director (which include 1998's critically acclaimed "Next Stop Wonderland"), Session 9 would not - to say the least - have elements of romantic comedy. He notes, I want to challenge myself as a filmmaker and not be pigeonholed as a guy who just does comedy. My other movies have been pretty dialogue-driven. But horror is more about generating menace and creepy vibes. So much of that comes out of what is not spoken. I have an interest in horror and more fantastic, extreme stories.)."

But sometimes the most fantastic, extreme stories are the all-too-credible ones. Anderson says, "There's nothing in Session 9 that's implausible or that you couldn't read about in your local paper. The more credible the better, as far as I'm concerned. Life is always scarier than fiction."

The screenplay came together, notes Gevedon, because " a lot of what takes place in the script is based on things that actually happened. The story that [the character of] Mike [,played by Gevedon,] tells about satanic ritual abuse syndrome - the names have been changed, but it's actually taken from a transcript.

'The house inspired us, it informed the screenplay. But we didn't want Session 9 to be a haunted- house movie. Not that there's anything wrong with haunted-house movies - there's a great 'B' movie named 'Burnt Offerings' [1976]."

Anderson muses, Good old-fashioned scary movies are harder to find these days. You couldn't have made 'The Exorcist' [19731 today with that script and that kind of meticulous character development. Studios shy away from that. They want pretty teenagers being glib and impaling each other with barbecue tongs, even though the recent 'Exorcist" reissue did great at the box-office. Today's so-called horror movies are really just tongue-in-cheek J. Crew ads with lots of fake blood and some flavour-of-the-week MTV metal band screaming on the soundtrack. Not scary.

 "Session 9 is patterned after movies like 'The Shining' [19801 and 'Don't Look Now' [19731, eerie psychological dramas that have a real, and effective, horror angle to them."

Gevedon concurs: "Movies like 'Don't Look Now' - that's what we're going for. The kind of picture that oozes a feeling, a vibe ... you're going to wonder 'what's going to happen, and please don't let it be bad.' One of my favourite movies is 'Dawn of the Dead' [19781, and one of the reasons 1 think it's great is that there's a sense of dire ominous ness - there's no place to go for these four guys, they're stuck and there's nobody to call ... that's an element we tried to bring to Session 9."

As the duo collaborated on the screenplay, the work went smoothly because, as Anderson points out, "We kept the structure very tight and very simple. It's not overly complex. There are strange psychological mysteries that draw you in - interesting nuggets that have to be cracked. It's a horror movie in the traditional sense of horror as dread and menace, as opposed to shock. This isn't 'Scream' [1996] or 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' [1997]."

The fact that the project's two screenwriters were old friends also kept them both on the same page (in more ways than one). Anderson elaborates, "Most of the projects I've done have been collaborative in nature. It just works better for me that way. I find collaborating in the writing process to be very helpful, because you need to talk through ideas and hash out stuff and fight it out - it's hard to do that on your own. Steve - being an actor - had a lot of good insights into characterisations."

Of those characterisations, Gevedon notes, "As the five guys [in the movie] were being developed, we'd say 'We want somebody like this, we want somebody like that, we'd like a kid in the mix.' I liked [the character of] Mike [and play him in the movie]. Mike is sort of a loner who comes from a pretty well-to-do background but gets a kick out of doing manual labour - to flip off his dad, I think."

In addition to the male leads, there is another lead character: the Danvers institution itself, which had been "cast" first. Anderson states, "We tailored the story to take advantage of as much of the place as possible, and featured certain locations: scenes in the subterranean tunnels that they used to ferry patients through from the respective wings, scenes in the patients' rooms which were called 'seclusions.' The building itself is shaped like an organism. It's got wings, bowels, a head, arms and legs - it's a living organism. The tunnels are the arteries that link the various organs.

Although Anderson and Gevedon got to know the place very well, Gevedon feels that their first exploratory trip colored a lot of the subsequent screenwriting of scenes set in specific locations within the complex. He recalls, "The first time Brad and 1 went in there, we wandered around. We got separated - I turned around and he was gone, he wanted to check something out. I had no flashlight. It was dark ' and I couldn't see a thing. I started walking towards where I thought he was and felt this wave of 'I really shouldn't be here alone right now.' I found Brad and told him about it, and he said, 'Oh yeah, me too. It's creepy here."'

Fusing the distinctive and unsettling setting with the chilling factual elements, the dilemma of the five lead characters was fleshed out. Anderson comments, "The horror evolves out of the psychological relationships between the men. The inner workings of the human mind get twisted and messed with in these dynamics - five men doing dangerous asbestos abatement work under stressful circumstances in a big crazy place."

The reality-based horror narrative ensured that the film could, and would, be made as a very modestly budgeted production. The Boston-based Scout Productions, whose three principals are all veterans of major film productions, came on board to produce the film on location in Danvers.

With one actor and the location already in place (literally), casting of the remaining roles began in earnest. The screenplay's crew characters drew interest from a variety of actors.

One actor who arrived for an audition felt comfortable right away: Brendan Sexton III remembers, I walked in and saw Stephen Gevedon right away. I'd met him years ago in New York City. It was a relief to see him - someone was batting on my side!" Indeed: Gevedon calls his younger friend and colleague "a great actor."

Sexton had been drawn to the screenplay because he favours independent and adventurous film projects. He notes, "The true horror in Session 9 is based in reality - more than the horror films we see coming out today. What sold me on the script and the movie is that it's not about slashing and gore. It's about real horror that can happen in modern-day America."

After playing his most high-profile role to date, as one of Brandon Teeria's murderers in "Boys Don't Cry," Sexton was also looking forward to "playing a normal kid, which I don't usually get to do. I didn't have to play the tough guy this time. Jeff isn't a bad guy - he's loose and actually kind of innocent - and that was good for me."

Casting a wide net, the producers and the film production company ferried the script overseas to internationally acclaimed actor Peter Mullan. Like Sexton, he'd staked his film career on doing non- mainstream fare. And, as such, the screenplay appealed to him: I really liked it. I thought it had a kind of European aesthetic to it. I have no interest whatsoever in Hollywood movies - they're way too formulaic and they bore me to death. What attracted me to Session 9 was its ambition beyond being just a straightforward horror story."

Mullan saw the film's horror story as "exploring the various modern demons of ego, paranoia, and unfulfillment - and it all comes together for these five working men in their perverse kind of home for a short time."

The Scottish actor agreed to make America -his home for a short time, and a work visa was soon arranged. "I don't like to be away from home for a length of time," he admits. "The other thing that attracted me about Session 9 was that it was a one-month shoot, four weeks. The fact that these filmmakers had very little money would, I felt, give us more freedom. Big studios have a certain way of working - usually six months of filming - and big-studio budget means a big-studio film."

Mullan's own nationality was retained for the character of Gordon Fleming, which he feels " gives the material a certain edge. I liked the idea of playing a Scotsman who is an immigrant husband and father in a foreign country. He's come across to pursue the American dream - success, happiness - but what he actually plugs into is a manmade hell. He finds the darkest side of American history.

"When he finds himself in this insane asylum, he doesn't know how to cope with the historic echoes of the place - the pain, the grief, the anger, the madness. Gordon is that mixture that all human beings are made of. good and bad, dark and light, paranoid and secure."
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