Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Good idea lost in the noise

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The cast was very good, the cinematography fine, its the movie itself which is just poorly edited and convoluted. I know this sort of thing is en-vogue these days but give me a stylish Argento over this sort of thing any day. The flashback sequences do little to make the films point or establish any coherency to the story and the surprise ending should really be no surprise no matter how improbable. Film is a form of communication and the end product fails miserably in communicating anything at all. Again, kudos to a fine cast in spite of the material. Sets, lighting, atmosphere, cinematography a movie that would have had everything going for it in more capable hands.

Psych 9 is a fantastic addition to the genre. Sara Foster was amazing and there were typical strong performances from Michael Biehn and Cary Elwes. The pacing was taut and the story kept me guessing; I was drawn into the setting and could feel the tension on screen. Even as I started to draw conclusions as to what was going on I couldn't be sure-there was always an element of doubt, a chance that I was reading it wrong. There were some twitch in your seat moments, but the suspense was the highlight. The pressure kept building, layer by layer, throughout the story. It was wonderfully shot; the setting and cinematography added depth to the story. I loved it and highly recommend it!

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.

A woman working the night shift in a hospital that has been closed begins to witness things that may be connected to a serial killer. After talking with a psychiatrist (Elwes) that still works in the hospital Roslyn (Foster) begins to see things differently. This movie is hard to explain and review. One because it jumps around between daydreams, flashbacks and the normal movie scenes that its hard to keep track where you are, and two because it's kinda boring I wasn't focused on it the entire time. This movie was a little like the "Last Exorcism" in the way that it seemed like every few minutes the plot and idea switched back and forth. There were so many ideas that could have gone somewhere cool if they let it. Even though this is another "Ghosthouse" movie it was more psychological then scary. I really don't feel one way or the other about it, not much of an impact. I give it a C.Would I watch again? - No, barely made it through once.