ThiefHott Too much of everything

Micitype Pretty Good

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Coventry I have a lot of sympathy and respect for the duo Simon Boyes and Adam Mason, because they write and direct – at a relatively high tempo, I may add – horror films that are at least somewhat "wayward" without necessarily obeying to the public's mainstream demands of remakes, teen slashers and lousy sequels. Their movies certainly aren't groundbreaking or highly innovative, but they do appeal to die-hard and experienced fans of the genre because they're brutal, grim and thoroughly sinister. Their film "Broken" is still my favorite, as it's a rudimentary but very disturbing survival movie, and I really liked the quirky atmosphere of "Blood River". "Pig" I merely found a pointless effort and I haven't seen "Luster" yet. "The Devil's Chair" is a downright terrific movie throughout two-thirds of the running time! The film opens like an interesting throwback to old-school asylum horror and gradually shifts into a clever and ultra-macabre supernatural monster movie, reminiscent of the brilliant "Hellraiser" I & II, with extremely brutal violence and enormously grim set pieces. Adam Mason's regular lead protagonist Andrew Howard (who looks a lot like a lesser muscular clone of Jason Statham) stars as junkie Nick West who, together with his blond bimbo girlfriend intrudes an abandoned mental institution for a wild night of sex and drugs. The find a creepy death chair in one of the rooms and suddenly, without properly realizing what triggered it, the girl is trapped and tortured in the chair before vanishing entirely. With his criminal record and pockets full of dope, Nick naturally gets convicted for murder and, because of his crazy stories, institutionalized for four years. He's released by Dr. Willard and politely forced to return to the place of the horror, along with the Doctor himself and a couple of his students. Supposedly for a psychology study, but Willard actually other sinister things in mind, as he discovered that Nick spoke the truth and the chair is actually an invention from a formerly acclaimed scientist who created a device to separate the soul from the body. "The Devil's Chair" is tense, compelling and contains some of the grisliest ambiance and imagery that I've seen in the past decade. The asylum's interior truly looks nightmarish and also the titular chair is an effectively unsettling piece of scenery. When set in motion, it turns into a diabolical killing machine and I wouldn't advise squeamish people to watch that process. The acting performances are more than decent, the pacing is fast, and there are a few nifty details that also contribute to the entertainment value of the film, like Nick West's brief but often very witty voice-over narration in between the regular dialogs. It's a very good and horrifying horror flick with a plot, atmosphere and a fantastic monster to boot. But then … and I wish I didn't have to write these final words. The plot undergoes a very bizarre and abrupt metamorphosis and gone is all of a sudden the carefully built up intrigue and plausible morbidity. Did Boyes and Mason run out of inspiration? Where they bored and/or fed up with the direction the movie was heading? Did they want to do something totally unexpected and experimental? No idea, but all I know is that – for me personally – the movie suddenly lost all my admiration and praise. Perhaps it's just me and my miserable intellect, as I encountered several reviews stating that the twist was sheer genius. You decide.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Stoned idiot and his hot girlfriend break into an abandoned insane-asylum, take a hit of acid and then decide to have sex while sitting in a demonically possessed electric chair (!) Said chair then comes to life(! again) and burns the hell out of the girl, as the excuse for disgusting effects. Four years later, we see this stoner, now being released from a hospital for the criminally insane and forced to return to the scene of the incident by a Cambridge doctor who arranged his release, Dr Willaird, who looks like a cross between older Sean Connery and Mick Fleetwood, with a bit of Christopher Lee thrown in.Melissa (Louise Griffiths) and Rachel (Elize du Toit) are hot; and the rambling, stream-of-consciousness voice-overs of the lead actor are amusing to a point, but too much contempt for the audience quickly becomes tiresome. Everything else about this fourth-wall-breaking commentary on people who watch horror flicks to see gore and mayhem is either pretentious, overly gory, or just boring. And in the end, it tries to get away with its own nonsensical plot by claiming to take place in the twisted little mind of its lead character. But the producers claim that they left the film up to people to interpret their own answers. No, you put out a film which makes little sense and tried to put it off on us, the viewers, to make sense out of it.F*ckin' yawn.

e-Liza1 If you listen to the lyrics of the song during the closing credits it says: "You must learn to love your demons and your demon's name is yours!"Take this trip of a movie and you may discover the meaning of those words. There is theatre in this movie that is definitely my way of thinking - and surrealism and eccentric imaginative villains, and an innocent way of telling a story that reminds me of "The Avengers" with Diana Rigg when she was at her most sexy and inspiring, and the witty and charming Patrick McNee; or perhaps, for another example of what I mean, "The Prisoner" with and made by Patrick McGoohan when he was dishy! From such British 60's theatrical antecedents come the characters in this story - charming, theatrical, existential, seeking the meaning of their existence whilst trapped in a surrealist story - is it an adventure or a dream?! "By the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes!" ... what is it? What on EARTH! Venture into the rabbit hole, but only if you are prepared for the butcher's knife when the plot turns sour. That's the only thing I didn't like. But I recognized the truth that was being expressed - "when the White Knight is talking backwards" is the White Knight really you? ... is it what it seems ... or is everything the reverse of however you think it is? Is the mad person sane and the sane person a demon? ... Or has the film-maker become lost in their own labyrinth of reversal-of-reality and turned the story into their own demonic reversal of the truth in one way, and the truth in another way?! If so, then it is the film-maker who has turned, in a final twist, insane and the movie become their demon that they do not love! Why, oh why, did the film-maker not embrace the reflective - reversed - or Looking-Glass "Gandalf the Wizard's" oh so important question: "Is the mad person sane" and, conversely - as implied, by the truth being the reversal, and in the consistency of a mirror's reflection - "Is the sane person mad"?! But he copped out and semi-opted for the status-quo, nouveau-riche, family values view of "reality". He could have flipped-entirely, but unfortunately he lost his thread in the mirror-maze and couldn't get out again!

moonpig82 I was pretty disappointed with this one. The story sounded interesting but after a poor beginning with ridiculous editing and 2 characters I couldn't really care less about I thought about switching it off. I stuck with it to the surprisingly good ending but I certainly wouldn't bother watching it again. I know horror movies are supposed to be far fetched and most of the time it is easy to forget how silly the plots can be but I couldn't do that with The Devil's Chair. I just couldn't believe that a man declared criminally insane and charged with murdering his girlfriend would be let out after just 4 years for a field trip back to the place where the murder is committed. And that 4 other people would voluntarily go with him. Oh and this place seems to be in the middle of nowhere. The acting is decent enough (although I did get distracted sometimes by the fact that the actor playing Nick resembles a potato). The special effects aren't bad either but the pacing is so slow. I really struggled to sit through the first hour. As well as it being boring in places, I found the narration really irritating. Especially when the picture would suddenly freeze and Nick would provide some comment. Were these supposed to be funny? Because they weren't. The only reason I rated it as high as 4/10 was because of the ending. The twist at the ending is predictable but that doesn't stop it being violent, gruesome and disturbing - exactly as horror should be. It was the only part of the movie that provoked a feeling in me other than boredom or irritation. It was pretty uncomfortable to sit through and watch and was extremely well done. But is it worth watching the movie just for the last 15 minutes? Personally I don't think so. If you are into blood and gore the movie delivers on that front but unfortunately not really on any other.