The Devil’s Chair

R4 DVD

Sony 2008

Nick is a fairly typical vacant streetwise young man who decides to take his girlfriend to an abandoned asylum for a bit of fun. Together they drop acid, at Nick’s insistence, to have a strange trip in a dark place. They have no idea of how dark it will get. As the drugs begin to hit they go upstairs and find a strange chair. It looks like a cross between a piece of gothic furniture and an electric chair. When his girlfriend sits in the chair it locks her in, tortures her and kills her. Nick freaks out and is found covered in blood, there is no sign of her body. His version of events is garbled to say the least and all this talk of a murderous chair is not taken especially seriously . He is declared mental incompetent and placed in an institution. Four years later and after lots of therapy and meds he is offered a limited release with the condition that he enters into an investigation of his psychotic break with a professor of psychiatry, who is writing a book.

Throughout the film we are treated to Nick’s unique view of the world as a form of continual “internal” dialogue, it is vicious, disturbed and violent. It is an element which constantly makes you wonder whether Nick is guilty or not, while we “see” the chair kill his girlfriend (through Nicks eyes), his internal dialogue seems to suggest something else is going on. Even in these early scenes you wonder whether what you are seeing is “real” or simply Nick’s perspective of the world.

When Nick meets the team involved in the investigation again you wonder where the edge between reality and fantasy really is. The team seems to be “archetypal” and would fit well into any horror classic. There is the old mad professor, the sarcastic male student, the sensitive caring female and the bitch. Are these characters really as they “are” or are we, again, seeing them through Nick’s eyes. This is further emphasized by the way Nick calls the professor “Gandalf” and other horror and fantasy film references.

When they reach the abandoned institution, they set up for the night and Nick begins to fall apart. The professor takes Nick aside and tells him that he believes his story and that the chair is a gateway to another world. He outlines the history of the Asylum and its role in illegal experimentation on patients and how the head of the institution developed a means to separate the soul from the body.

Before long a number of them have “gone over” and as Nick goes into the other world to save the day, we realize that the professor is actually using them as food for a demon on the other side. The story gets stranger and stranger with some amazing special effects and occult themes, this section of the film has strong resonances with the work of H.P Lovecraft and Clive Barker and such films as From Beyond and Hellraiser. As the occult themes become more and more extreme you begin to question the authenticity of what you are seeing, isn’t it all too “clear cut” – doesn’t it all fit together just a bit too easily, moreover isn’t is all a bit clichéd ?

However, you are so caught up in the chase through the underworld with bloodthirsty demons and dark hallways and tunnels that you don’t give it a second thought until reality hits.

Just as you begin to accept that Nick is innocent and that The Devil’s Chair is about some great occult conspiracy led by the professor, you are brought crashing back into reality. The observation made “there was no chair” is so simple and yet so profound. Nick was and still is, a psychopathic killer. The whole story of the chair etc may or may not be in Nick’s imagination, but in any event he clearly knows exactly what he is doing and he does it with abandon. This is not to say he is not mad nor that he does not on some level believe the fantasy he creates, but that it simply serves a function.

The final section of the film is a total shock compared to the rest; it is bloody, grisly, gore ridden and brutal, it moves quickly from a horror fantasy to a slasher and certainly grabs you by the throat. Nick clearly has a grasp on reality and knows he must kill the team to escape back into the world and does so with great relish.

This is an unusual horror film in that it deliberately plays with the conventions of traditional horror filmmaking. The more horror films you have seen the more you will get taken in by Nick’s storytelling, what you “see” are Nick’s deliberate take on events, his interpretation of reality. Of course the question is left open whether Nick really believed he was part of a Lovecraftian horror story or whether he was simply a psychopath. However, considering that he intensely kisses his nonexistent girlfriend at the end of the film, either interpretation is possible.

The Devil’s Chair is well made, superbly acted and has a plot which is surprisingly creative. It really is an unusual take on the horror genre and quite an original work of cinema.

This review will appear in Volume 2:1 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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