Review of Psych:9

Psych:9 (2010)
5/10
Psych:9
4 March 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Sara Foster is newly hired to organize files in a rundown hospital about to be closed for good. There are no longer any patients, nurses or doctors who work there. She is a mess. Foster was abused by her father, nearly burned alive in a car by her mother, and almost sodomized by her psychotherapist whose method of curing his patients was questionable to say the least. Foster is cold, unfeeling, and numb to her cabbie husband who wears the fatigue of being married to this woman on his face and demeanor. The baggage of her past polarizes her from everyone around her. Cary Elwes is a therapist organizing files in the floor containing the psych ward, offering his services to Sara who seems to be coming unglued, nightmares deriving from trauma which seems just as real to her as an adult as they were when she was a victimized daughter. Foster seems to be swallowed up by memories, snapped back into reality by those who see that she has drifted back into the past. She simply cannot escape, a reason she could be a suspect behind a series of killings to blond women in the area near the hospital where she works, the use of a hammer is the weapon of choice for the psychopath. Slow moving psycho drama is what one might consider a "slow burn" type of film, but I found it a bit too leisurely paced, not to mention, the lead character is really difficult to attach to. Foster here is a polar opposite of her character in the Owen Wilson comedy THE BIG BOUNCE or the bubbly girl action flick DEBS. She has these pouty lips which work for her troubled character who has a hard time showing affection to Gabriel Mann, her husband, and, to his credit, this man does tolerate a lot of BS from her. He acknowledges that she has problems, and seems to have put up with his share of emotional--and sexual--distance, as well as, instances where she berates and scolds him for any small thing(like when she bitches him out for looking at photographs in a file folder of a previous patient). When she considers Mann a possible candidate for the hammer-killer, even asking him questions which would insinuate distrust and paranoia, it's surprising he'd remain loyal to her even to the end. Michael Biehn(a man who has aged quite well)is the detective on the hammer-killer case who visits the hospital where Sara works, with questions, and eventually--motivated by her, believe it or not--visits Mann, just to make sure his whereabouts are innocent. These kinds of movies do that. The suspects are put out there and we must determine if we believe this or that character has the capability to commit these murders in question. Almost right from the beginning, Foster's mental state is challenged, so the end result shouldn't really come as any big surprise. Colleen Camp has a small role as a friend of Foster's who got her the graveyard shift job at the hospital, later regretting that decision. Elwes never seems hostile which obviously sounds alarms that something sinister lies behind his character, even though he offers an ear to her, with advice and counsel this poor woman needs desperately. The real star of the film is the ominous hospital, the walls green and yellow, the floors and walls live and breathe the horrors and wounded lives which happened there. I think that is important, that we feel the disconcerting history which remain even though the halls and rooms are now absent bodies.
4 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed