The Devil's Chair

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Reckless Nick West (Andrew Howard) takes his girlfriend to an abandoned warehouse to drop acid, but when she sits on a weird chair, she is sucked into a demonic hole, leaving Nick traumatized. Years later, he's in a psychiatric hospital run by Dr. Willard (David Gant) who is the first person to give his story any credence. He offers him escape from the asylum if Nick returns with him to the scene of the mystery to conduct an experiment. But as members of the group go missing, it becomes clear something evil is lurking in the walls of this eerie place...

When I first caught sight of this bizarre looking straight to DVD horror film, I soon cleared the sight of it from my mind, but finding it again in the bargain bin at Morrison's, I thought...why not give it a try? While I don't feel I completely wasted my time, it does feel like a wasted opportunity in a lot of respects.

Adam Mason's film is unsure whether it wants to play as a straight out mind fu*k, gore porn horror flick or a self referentializing parody of the genre, with the lead character giving voice overs saying how we'll like it 'if we saw Hellraiser or Pumpkinhead' and at one point lamenting what 'a poorly written, badly acted' film it's become, either the way the writing feels uncertain of itself and in turn loses the audience a bit. The gore factor really kicks in at the end, shocking even by horror standards with all the blood/distress on display. Either way, you're more likely to sit lost on The Devil's Chair than be on the edge of it. **

Nick West (Andrew Howard) is a troubled soul. He's spent the last four years in a mental institution for a horrific murder that he says he can't remember committing. Dr. Willard (David Grant) decides that it's a good idea to take Nick, along with three college students, back to the scene of the crime. Willard believes they can figure out what really took place. So, the group sets up for a long weekend in the huge, abandoned building in question.

All is well until the titular chair enters the picture. Weirdness escalates into nightmare and ultimate doom. All hell breaks loose, resulting in madness and inescapable death.

Sound like fun?

THE DEVIL'S CHAIR is Director Adam Mason's grimy, foul follow-up to BROKEN. Mason seems dead-set on making movies that extinguish all hope. This film has a tricky, pseudo supernatural thing going on, that twists the plot, leading to a confoundingly unsettling finale. After watching this one, the viewer may feel compelled to watch a Disney film or romcom, just to reset the mind...

This British horror film is unusual in a few aspects. It starts by showing the end (or is it?) of the story. It has the main character, Nick, as a narrator, who's more often a commentator who hits the pause button (freeze-frame) when he makes a comment. Nick is considered criminally insane because of the way his lover died 4 years ago in an abandoned asylum, but Nick insists it was due to supernatural causes (involving a weird chair). Early in the film, Nick admits he can be the only one who did it although he doesn't remember doing it. An old professor, his assistant and two students have the "genius" idea to bring back the supposedly criminally insane Nick to the asylum where the murder was committed, to study him. Right there, I had a problem believing such a dumb idea could actually happen.

The "devil's chair" in the abandoned asylum is a sinister-looking chair with a skull, initially inoffensive, which "probes" people (creepiest effects of the movie) before shunting them off to another version of the asylum with a demon-skulled tentacled monster roaming. I thought sometimes it looked freakish, sometimes amateurish. The acting was unequal, but I think it might have been intentional. The pompous old professor was atrocious in his line delivery. The main character/narrator was actually good playing it serious, troubled, intense, sometimes mean, channelling Jason Statham. The others were OK, except the brown-haired assistant that was also bad, but nowhere near the level of the professor. There were jarring changes in the tone of the movie with the main character actually admonishing the viewer once. The "normal" version of the asylum was undermined by the irrational, sometimes corny, behaviour of the characters, which in a way got eventually explained. The "other" version of the asylum was sometimes unnerving with interesting cinematography.

However, it's the last act (last 20 minutes or so) that was really horrifying with its final twist that I liked but that might frustrate others. For low-budget horror, it does try to be somewhat different but ends up a mixed-bag. I wondered what messages the creators were trying to convey if anything. One of them might be that the true horror doesn't lie in supernatural shenanigans but in the human psyche. Another might be simply what the main character spews out angrily at the viewer near the end. I don't think I particularly liked this movie, but I found it positively peculiar nevertheless.

Rating: 6 out of 10 (Good)

I was on the fence whether I should vote 4 or 5 on this. While this horror flick is interesting and has some good effects in regard to the chair itself it definitely lacks in some areas around acting and story. (For example, the main character is in an asylum. He's released to a professor who wants to write a book on what happened when Nick's girlfriend was killed. Probably not such a smart idea.) However, the lead actor, Andrew Howard, really is the lynch pin that keeps the movie together. If he hadn't been as good in the lead role I would definitely have rated this lower. He enables the movie to have enough interest for you to want to see it through to the end. There is the usual blood and guts but overall it happens in the right places and isn't done without advancing the story. If you're a fan of B horror I think that you'd like this. If you only watch horror occasionally I'd pass on this one.

Im a huge horror fan and after watching this it left me feeling very uneasy towards the end it doesn't make sense none of it does but when you grasp the ending you begin to realize the devil chair/torture chamber wasn't real the entire movie was based on nick wests demented sociopathic mindset it was merely in his mind that was infact confirmed when the scene showed him kissing the student Rachel who resembled his first girlfriend only to realize she was not there thats when the movie is put in its true perspective that it was all in his mind that every scene was not real it has a clever story plot but the CGI monster wasn't scary at all and the gore seemed somewhat repetitive i give it a 3/10