The Devil’s Chair

The Devil’s Chair is a sporadically interesting but mostly interminable little horror flick revolving around the bloodshed that ensues after a macho twit (Andrew Howard’s Nick West) stumbles upon a chair that is, in fact, a portal to some sort of demonic underworld. It’s clear right off the bat that filmmaker Adam Mason is trying to do something different here, and although he does succeed in offering up one or two viscerally thrilling moments (that chair is quite gruesome, admittedly), the film is by and large dominated by the uninteresting shenanigans of several wholly uninteresting characters. The unusually silly vibe only worsens as the movie progresses, with the presence of horse-faced demons and sinister piles of laundry ratcheting up the ludicrous factor exponentially. That Howard’s entire performance essentially boils down to a Jason Statham impression (complete with whispery narration!) certainly doesn’t help matters, and the bottom line is that I preferred this movie back when it was called Session 9.

* out of ****