Bumpin' an old thread but I don't think it's bad in this case - I found this movie two days ago in a local hypermarket and bought it when I realized that it was made by the same guy who directed The Machinist. I had read about Session 9 before, but only briefly, in some trivia-section about Silent Hill 3 which is one of my favourite games (as well as a must-play for most people on here who haven't seen it yet, imo) and contains an homage to S9's famous wheelchair-shot.
I didn't know anything about it other than the fact there were some audio tapes involved. I assumed, story-wise, it would be something in the vein of that mediocre "Frágiles" movie so I was mainly just looking forward to Anderson's high standards regarding camera aesthetics, guessing from The Machinist... Now, I didn't know it was shot in a real abandoned building, and I didn't know the DB entry either, but soon after it began, I was wondering whether there would be one, cause it all looked so authentic. No silly props to be seen and no green and blue color filters either... in fact, in the beginning I thought the "look" of the film was kinda cheap, due to the HD cameras and the very sharp quality of the images, it seemed cold and too "clean", almost looked like a documentary to me... but what appeared to be beginning as a disappointment turned out to be one of the movie's big strengths, and maybe one of the reasons it did spook me eventually - don't get me wrong, the camera work was well executed, I'm just talking about the very minimalistic processing of the raw footage. It allowed, or forced me to pay attention to the acting, which was pretty damn good actually, and the story and atmosphere, and not think about pretty visuals too often (except for the opening shot, that impressed me an all visual levels). So towards the end I ended up being pretty creeped out ... and that doesn't happen often anymore these days when I watch a movie. This was a clever and therefore creepy film for me, I'm glad I bought it, and I'm happy to know how the team respected the place for what it was. Sad it's gone.