Session 9 - Plot

Plot

The Danvers State Hospital has been closed since 1985. Gordon Fleming (Mullan) is the owner of The Hazmat Elimination Company, a small asbestos removal company. When he hears that the hospital needs asbestos removed, he makes a bid to remove it, as he is in desperate need of money. He is also a new father, and the stress of work and parenthood have been causing problems between him and his wife, Wendy.

Gordon's team is small, but eclectic. Mike (Gevedon) is a law school dropout, who knows the most about the asylum in the group. Phil (Caruso) is filled with bitterness after losing his long-time girlfriend to Hank (Lucas), another team member. Because of this, Phil has taken up smoking marijuana. Jeff, Gordon's nephew (Sexton III), is the youngest member, and suffers from severe nyctophobia.

Mike discovers a box marked "Evidence" in a tunnel. Inside, he finds a collection of nine taped sessions with former patient number 444, a 37-year-old named Mary Hobbes from 1974. He listens and becomes increasingly engrossed in the interviews, which detail her dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities). Two of Hobbes' personalities are harmless and childlike. They all refer to another personality named Simon, someone they don't want to talk about. Throughout the sessions, it is revealed that something terrible happened involving a knife and a china doll when she was fourteen during Christmas 1951 in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Gordon opens up to Phil and admits that he hit Wendy after she accidentally spilled a pot of boiling water on him. He is extremely depressed, frequently talking to his wife on his cell phone, asking her forgiveness. Meanwhile, Hank finds a stash of old coins and other valuable items which, unbeknownst to him, are from the back of a crematory. He returns one night to steal the artifacts, among which he finds an orbitoclast. He follows sounds and finds an empty peanut butter jar, the same as the kind Gordon brought home the first night. Terrified, Hank tries to run out of the tunnels, when he is attacked by an unseen assailant and disappears. Gordon begins to suspect that Phil may have murdered him. Hank, however, is soon found by Jeff, and as he stares out the window with his glasses on, he asks Jeff "What are you doing here?" Gordon goes with Jeff to investigate but Hank is gone when they arrive. The coworkers split up to find Hank. Phil eventually finds him sitting on the ground in one of the tunnels, half-naked, and repeatedly asking "What are you doing here?" One by one, each of the men become lost in the asylum and are slowly ambushed by an unseen attacker.

Meanwhile, the recording of the final session with patient 444, session 9, is heard. Simon, the evil personality, finally speaks. He reveals that when she was a child, Mary, encouraged by Simon, murdered her brother after he scared her. He had previously caused her to severely injure herself by falling over onto her china doll. She then proceeded to kill the rest of her family. While the recording plays, Phil finds Gordon in one of the patient rooms, who is staring in horror at pictures of his family hanging on the wall.

Later on, as the new employee replacing Hank pulls up to the asylum, Gordon is shown standing in one of the main rooms, and soon finds Hank on the floor. Phil then appears, and tells him to wake up and to 'take a REALLY good look around.' A flashback reveals that, after his initial inspection of the hospital, Gordon went home, and when his wife spilled the boiling water on him, he did not slap her as he told Phil, but in fact murdered her and his daughter, at Simon's encouragement. He then proceeded to murder all of his colleagues in succession (committing the murders in a dissociative state). It's also revealed when Phil approached Gordon while he was looking at the pictures on the wall, Phil accused Gordon of attacking Hank, and and as a result, Gordon murders him. He then proceeds to murder the new employee with the orbitoclast after he comes into the room.

Gordon, talking into his broken cell phone, starts crying and apologizing to his wife. In the final scene, the doctor asks: "And where do you live, Simon?" Simon replies, "I live in the weak and the wounded, Doc."