The story revolves around Roslyn (Sara Foster) who starts a new job at a recently closed down hospital sorting out the old patient files. She'll be working mostly alone, at night, subtle set-up. There is one other person in the hospital, a psych doc working up on the fifth floor, Dr. Clement (Cary Elwes). Rosalyn bumps into him one night and they start to hang out and talk at night. This is all happening against the backdrop of someone murdering women with a hammer. Rosalyn seems to be having some marital problems and is non to happy when her husband, Cole (Gabriel Mann), shows up at her work with her lunch and begins to read the patient files. Then with no warning she scrawls 'I want my baby' on the wall of her apartment and snaps. Her talks with Dr. Clements become therapy sessions and we find out she was abused as a kid, killed her father when she was 10 and escaped being burned alive by her mother a few weeks later. Rosalyn begins to believe her husband is responsible for the murders when she realizes that all the victims were patients at the hospital whose files he could have read.
During her therapy session's we also find out she is unable to have kids and that she was a patient herself on the psych ward after her ordeal as a child. As she slowly begins to lose it the police clear her husband but even after being told that the epicenter of all the attacks is the hospital no one seems to suspect her at all. It all comes to a head when her friend, who got her the job, shows up at work and tells her that the psych doc working on the fifth floor will finally be coming in tonight...huh? Rosalyn tells her about Clements only to be told that he WAS a doc there but he was murdered by a patient years ago. Rosalyn rushes upstairs to find the 5th floor is a mess that no one has worked on and the treatment rooms are covered in 'I want my baby' she plays the tapes from her sessions and they only have her voice on them. She's officially bat-shit crazy. Despite all this she still insists that Clements is real and he is murdering the blond women because he was killed by a blond patient and he wants revenge. This for me is were all logic get's thrown out the window. Rosalyn is on the roof, her friend Beth is murdered on the stairs. Clements shows up on the roof with a bloody hammer Rosalyn threatens to destroy all the files so he will never be able to find out who killed him, we clearly see she is yelling at nothing and she torches the files before throwing herself down a laundry chute landing right next to the blaze she just started and into a locked room. Cole manages to save her and they both get out alive. The movie closes with Rosalyn revealing that she is pregnant and has dyed her hair blond. Wtf...so who actually killed them? Is there a supernatural element at work that they just never acknowledged or was she just crazy? Why did I just sit through a movie where the best thing was the opening credit reel?
One thing is evident, Shortell has probably seen every scholocky low rent horror movie made in the last 10 years and for some reason held them up as something to aspire too. The difference here is that while horror movies like this are a dime a dozen a lot of them are actually enjoyable, Psych:9 is not. It's a clumsy, slow paced mess that makes little to no sense. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that I need all my films tied up in a neat little bow. There are a lot of great movies out there that have meandering, twist filled plots but the difference is in the writing, they still manage to offer the viewer some sense of completion. Taking into account that this is a first feature there are some redeeming elements, it's shot fairly well, the ambiance and lighting is decent and there are definitely some creepy moments. If you're a fan of this kind of movie then you might do OK with it, just keep in mind that it's a debut effort and you'll probably be scratching your head at the end.
Directed by: Andrew Shortell
Written by: Lawrence Robinson
Starring: Sara Foster, Cary Elwes and Gabriel Mann
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Website: http://www.psych9.com/
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