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Psychology
student, Danielle, has just moved into a
beautiful old Victorian house in the suburbs where she
hopes to rebuild her life. However, she quickly
realizes that there's something strange going on
inside the house and finds out that a demented serial
killer once lived there and was buried alive almost
exactly 100 years ago. Could his spirit be back?
Okay first of all - the chair in the ceiling - BRILLIANT!
There, just had to get that off of my chest. This wasn't
quite what I had expected. I don't think that anyone
would expect this from a movie called The Chair. I figured
it'd be similar to either Prisoner or The Devil's Chair
but no, this was certainly something we haven't seen
before. The Chair is a rather clever and artistic
horror flick which offers a lot in terms of originality
and creativity - even with the small budget that it
obviously had. It's got a rather slow pace but you're
almost constantly glued to the screen as you just know
that they pay-off is going to be good. See, for most
of the time you have no idea what's really going on
but you know that the conclusion will be worth it. Well
the conclusion didn't turn out to be as great as I had
expected but hey, at least we got one.
Rookie actress (and I love to show it) Alanna Chisholm
plays Danielle Velayo, a student who sublets an old
house in the suburbs (or so I think). Now, we don't
know much about Danielle. In fact, all we know about
her is that she broke up with her boyfriend a couple
of months ago and that she has to take some kind of
pills. We don't know what the pills are for or why she's
taking them but it doesn't really matter because
lately Danielle has been really lazy with taking the
pills anyway. Right, so the house is haunted... by
the spirit of a serial killer. I don't want to spoil
too much but eventually Danielle starts to become
more and more like the serial killer without even
noticing it - and what is that thing that she's building?
The Chair is a very good horror movie but it has a lot
of rookie mistakes in it that are somewhat difficult
to ignore. Like I said before, we know nothing about
the characters, the directing is questionable with
some really strange and unflattering angles, the acting
is quite poor and the movie had a tendency to drag due
to the slow pace. It really could have used some more
oomph in it. Furthermore, most of the movie takes place
inside one single house. This is never a good idea,
you need more than just one location. Still, I don't
want to bash this movie down too much because it's
actually a pretty decent horror thriller, especially
considering that it's distributed DTV by Lions Gate
(which is never a good sign).
Ultimately I kind of enjoyed The Chair and I'm sure that
it had a lot of potential but there were just too many
things going against it for it to be able to really
shine. I do appreciate all the effort and hard work
that's been put into this project though and I will
recommend that you rent it as it's certainly better than
most DTV horror flicks these days.
Nothing worth mentioning.
Crash! Boom! Bang! Someone's slamming on pots in the
kitchen again. No music here, just a lot of noises.
Could have, should have, would have been a great horror
flick had it only had a higher budget so that they
could've afforded real actors, some better special
effects and someone to tweak the script a little. Still,
The Chair is a decent movie, just not an outstanding
one. Worth checking out though.
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