Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Psych:9 Blu-ray Movie Review

This is one hospital you probably don't want to be taken to.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 3, 2011

You’d have to be crazy to go to work in an abandoned hospital on the night shift, and then journey upstairs to a perhaps haunted psych ward, wouldn’t you? Well, that may or may not constitute a spoiler, but it aptly sums up the subtext of Psych: 9, a derivative but sporadically effective thriller-horror film that is strong on ambience and woefully short on logic and well crafted writing. What is it about the horror genre that seems to so attract new directors to its axe wielding, serial killing, forsaken (and usually haunted) shores? Once again we’re “treated” to a newbie director, in this case Andrew Shortell, proving to the world he’s probably got an encyclopedic knowledge of every cheapie horror flick released over the past 20 or more years. How do we know? Take the opening sequence for just one example. A frantic blonde runs through a grainy, desaturated semi-urban landscape screaming for help. She approaches a monolithic, perhaps industrial, building and pounds on a door, which is of course locked. Cut to a close-up of the back of her head, as she quickly turns in horror to greet the claw end of a hammer coming down hard and fast. Cut again to the inside of the door, which suddenly jolts as if a dead body had fallen against it. The camera pans down to the space under the door. What do you think is coming? Do you really need more than one guess? Well, it’s a slowly oozing pool of oily black blood, of course, seeping under the door and meandering toward the viewer. How many times have you seen something like that? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?

After that opening gambit, we get what is arguably the most creative element in Psych: 9, and it’s only slightly funny and perhaps sad that it’s the opening credits sequence. Though once again it’s derivative, the sequence features blossoming Rorschach Test imagery which slowly reveal faces of women in distress. It’s shocking, disturbing, and, best of all, fully saturated, with bold, clear imagery and an appealingly unsettling palette. When a film’s best element is its credits sequence, you know you’re in for a long, turgid ride.

Psych 9 does manage not to belabor its point, which is one of its minor saving graces. We’re thrust headlong into its story after the credits, finding our heroine Roslyn (Sara Foster) taking a night shift job at an abandoned hospital which is slated to be torn down for redevelopment. Files need to be collated and copied and Roslyn in her job interview states that she needs the peace and quiet of an overnight job. Yeah, right. She’s told she won’t be alone at the hospital (yeah, right—again). There’s a 24 hour security guard in a little booth out front, and upstairs an actual bona fide doctor is doing more or less the same job she is, only on the abandoned psych ward. Cue creepy music.

Almost right off the bat strange, spooky things start happening. Roslyn hears what sounds like singing. She thinks she sees ghosts. The security guard seems menacing and scary. She does get a bit of a respite when she meets the upstairs worker, Dr. Clement (Cary Elwes, evidently picking up a paycheck), who helps her allay her fears by walking through her own ward to determine if there are any spooks hiding in the corner. Dr. Clement is suave, elegant and, best of all, speaks with a British accent, so of course he seems instantly menacing and scary, much like the security guard. Soon Dr. Clement is helping Roslyn uncover long buried secrets from her own troubled past.

Oh, but wait. Have I mentioned there’s a serial killer offing blonde women in the neighborhood around the hospital? Hence the opening sequence of Psych: 9. Does it even need to be mentioned that Roslyn soon suspects that the killer, dubbed the Nighthawk by the press, has something to do with the abandoned hospital? Soon she’s contacted by a strangely reserved police detective (Michael Biehn, also evidently picking up a paycheck) who’s investigating the case. And so the film starts to dabble in whodunit land. Could it be Dr. Clement? The creepy security guard? The detective? Or Roslyn’s own husband, a cab driver who works the neighborhood and never seems quite clear on where he’s been or what fares he’s picked up? Or is it—well, you’re probably miles ahead of me by this time, and also screenwriter Lawrence Robinson, who evidently assumes his audience has never seen any thriller or horror film with a “big twist” at the end.

Part of the problem with Psych: 9 is that it’s deliberately ambivalent about what’s going on. If the film had been deeper and darker, like Scorsese’s Shutter Island (a film Psych: 9 resembles in tone and ambience, if certainly not in execution), this uncertainty could have been extremely effective. Instead, my hunch is a lot of viewers are going to be scratching their heads wondering exactly what the climax, if not the final final twist, means.

The best thing about the actual film (as opposed to the credits sequence) is its production design and ugly green fluorescent lighting scheme. The abandoned hospital is very effectively realized, with dark and dank hallways strewn with papers and rotting medical equipment. The harsh and glaring light seems almost a taunt in a genre that more typically casts everything in dark shadows. The performances here are also fine, as far as they go, though the actors are saddled with ridiculous dialogue and pat situations. Shortell certainly stages things well, but the film simply is too derivative to ever manage anything beyond a slightly unsettling air and an overall distasteful feeling. You’d probably have to be crazy to want to watch Psych: 9.

Psych:9 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Psych: 9 is yet another horror film which traffics in grainy, desaturated footage interspersed with luridly lit sequences, in this case the harsh yellow-green fluorescence of the hospital's glaring bulbs. The AVC encoded 1080p image, in 2.55:1, is very typical of a lot of recent films in this genre, with fluctuating contrast, which is either intentionally overblown, leaving things blooming and fuzzy, or alternately intentionally low contrast, leaving things extremely grainy with an equal lack of fine detail. Obviously this is exactly the look Shortell was going for, and so it's hard to fault the Blu-ray for accurately reproducing it, but from an objective standpoint, while the image here is reasonably sharp and well detailed, it's not particularly impressive from a pure hi-def standpoint, especially considering the overall softness of the transfer. The best element here is the ugly and unsettling reproduction of the harsh yellow-green color scheme, which paints virtually the entire film in a sort of quasi-alien palette. While this choice does rob some of the film of fine detail, close-ups can still reveal some nice elements.

Psych:9 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Psych: 9's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is rather impressive for what was obviously an extremely low budget film. Not only is fidelity top notch, surround activity is very creatively handled, aided and abetted by the spooky ambience of the hospital, which allows for everything from creepy, far away sounding singing to sudden thumps and crashes to engage the side and rear channels. There are some extremely effective and immersive moments throughout this film, including one of Roslyn's hallucinations, where she's enclosed in a room where her own voice screaming "I want my baby" echoes through the surrounds in a really unsettling mix. While some of the sound effects are hackneyed, overall the sound design here really ups the terror level in a couple of key sequences, including two which involve fire, with the roaring sound of flames surrounding the listener. Dialogue is always crisp and clear and well mixed, and the entire track is really excellent for a low budget film.

Psych:9 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Psych: 9 offers the following supplements on Blu-ray:

• Fear and Desire: The Making of Psych: 9 (SD; 23:02) follows host Andrew Shortell as he sets up various shots.
• Deleted Scenes (SD; 35:49) has a couple of interesting moments, including an operatic alternate opening segment.
• Outtakes (SD; 22:12) is one of the odder extras in recent memory, nothing like the expected gag reel. Instead we get whole scenes which are "ruined" by various situations like a whistling fake cigarette. Really peculiar that they included these.
• Theatrical Trailer

Psych:9 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lionsgate is promoting some of these neophyte directors' efforts under the branding of Ghost House Underground, and if you take into account these are by and large first features, there are some redeeming elements here. Unfortunately Psych: 9 is simply too derivative for its own good, despite some creepy moments and an overall unsettling ambience. If you're a fan of this kind of film, you'll probably do OK to give it an evening's rental on a dark and stormy night. Otherwise, there are a host of better, more original offerings out there, many released by Lionsgate itself.