The Devil's Chair

I do appreciate the effort but a pair of suspenders have more suspense than this rotten egg of death. The story evolves around an evil chair adorned with a skull and placed conveniently (probably by some deranged carpenter) in a desolate building, a former asylum. To top it off the main character - a mental patient - continuously delivers a voice-over with a lisp which I believe he suffers from, listening to which is as thrilling as a boat ride on dry land.

Believe me you've seen it done before and better (Session 9 anyone?), don't punish yourself by watching the "Chair". I dosed off countless times which was about the most refreshing thing about the whole experience.

I am a big fan of English film and have been excited by recent films like The Descent, and Dead Mans Shoes in the horror genre; and I hope that filmmakers with the sort of vision that makes these films possible get all the accolades and funding that they require to continue taking English film forward.

however, this film and its director Adam 'I'm a t**t' mason, makes me embarrassed to have been born in the same country. To say this film is conceited would be a massive compliment, it attempts the self aware horror take a la 'Man Bites Dog' where the protagonist psycho talks to the audience and even at one point says 'is this what you want, this badly written, terribly acted horror movie' or something of the sort and I agree whole heartedly. The acting is shallow, the 'big plot twists' are tedious and I found it difficult to care about the characters at all.

I implore that you do not watch this movie unless you are staving off suicide with terrible self involved movies

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. **

People in an old abandoned asylum ? Going crazy ? Dying ?

We've already seen it all before, and this time, although the production and cast are decent (the overall sound design is actually quite good despite too many squishy noises), I just can't help but think of Brad Anderson's excellent (if flawed in its own ways) "Session 9". Way better.

Sorry, but since braincells don't work on cash, a low budget doesn't excuse a poor script.

So let's make it short : if you want gore & predictable "twists" you might enjoy this one ; if you'd prefer a better film go for "Session 9". My vote is 3 out of 10, however totally unreasonably raised to a 5 due to Matt Berry's appearance (I'm a Boosh fan), and Zoe Keating's beautiful score.

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)