Really Surprised!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

** THIS REVIEW BELOW CONTAINS A LOT OF SPOILERS. IF YOU DON'T WANT A SUMMARY OF THE MOVIE, I SUGGEST VIEWING THE FILM BEFORE READING THIS REVIEW. THANK YOU.**This movie was very intriguing indeed. Everything made sense, except the ending, which I will get to later. This film gave me the feeling of looking in on a group from a third party point of view. Especially when focusing on the main character Nick West.In the beginning Nick took his very sexy girlfriend to this abandon asylum, ate a bunch of acid, and went on this psycho version of a "Norman Bates-sexcapade" or something. Then his girlfriend sits in this chair while they're tripping, and then cuffs lock on her hands, and it starts cutting her and injects her with this liquid s**t that came from a syringe. The chair's mechanized to an extreme, activated by blood, from pricking the finger in this hole that was designed into it. After they start freaking out, and he tries to rescue her, then poof, she's gone. Disappeared into the air. The next thing that comes together is Nick gets arrested and put into this psych ward. It reveals little of his story, and they "convince" him he had temporary insanity. Later on in the movie, it left me wondering if this was true or not. He ends up getting out on some kind of experimental field trip with the Psychologist and a handful of students. I felt this to be a little weak. It would take a lot more than just one Psychologists approval to remove a murderous mental health patient from a high security asylum. When Nick west returned to the place he dreaded, which was back to the asylum which the chair was located in, he agreed to assist the professor/psychologist in studying this chair. The psychologist happens to be the only person who doesn't believe he's totally nuts, because he knows the truth of the chair. The chair is supposed to be the gateway to another dimension, where demons and weird sh*t exists. Towards three-quarters into the movie, one of the students gets sucked into this other dimension via sticking her finger in the hole, getting injected, and disappearing from the chair. Nick then runs in after her. It brings them both to this trippy world, where this black sh*t takes the form of different creators and people. Then, the others come across into the dimension from the chair. This is where the movie got interesting for me. Once on the other side, they begin doing weird stuff, and then, later, near death, the professor tells one of the students not to touch Nick, that none of this is really happening at all. Then POOF, we're back to the point of view, from our dimension. It shows everybody brutally murdered in the same room as the chair, and Nick West having sex with a student. So bizarre. This gets even more confusing. Then, the student comes aware, then runs away from Nick. Then, eventually he kills her. Now it's hard to dictate whether the events in the movie were actually happening, or that if Nick West was just completely f**king nuts. It had a proper back story to this chair, who built it, and why the Psychologist, mental patient (Nick West), and why psychology students were there at the asylum.Everything fell into place, except the end. I was just sitting there like..what the f**k am I supposed to think. In the end, it shows he is nuts, and he did murder everyone. Now, was that just because he was nuts, was there even a chair at all, or was it because of the chair? It is so trippy to think about. This movie had a good connection to Nick West and to the Psychologist. However, I wasn't feeling the students at all. If it wasn't for the students, there would be nothing typical about this movie. However, their presence as actors did NOT make this into a bad movie, just more on the side stuff to take in.When the movie ended there were three questions in my mind. The first was, "Was there even a chair or another dimension, or was Nick just plain bonkers?" The second was, "Did Nick plan this out when they left the asylum he was admitted to, since he was just a plain murdering psycho anyway?" Or three, "Did the chair turn him into a psychopath after he crossed?" I guess you can interpret the ending in your own way.You wont be disappointed in any of the acting in this movie. Everything makes since, except the end, at least to me anyway. It is a good psychological thriller. I give this movie a "B-".

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.

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.

I only bought this film because it was on sale for £3, I didn't expect much from it but strangely I enjoyed it. That's not to say I thought it was a good movie, to be honest I thought it was a pretty bad movie but I still got a kick from watching it.I think as long as you don't expect a brilliant plot, you can enjoy this film. There's a couple of overblown gore scenes but it kinda feels like a cheap 80's horror film which, if you're a fan of those, is nicely nostalgic.Because they haven't over thought the plot in an attempt to seem clever, you can tell what's going to happen from about five minutes in, but the acting in the film is surprisingly decent & the effects are pretty good to boot. I liked it a whole lot more than the likes of 'Shrooms' but then this film was never going to be as good as 'Severance'. Although if you consider they only had 2 weeks to prepare this film, with only 3 days to write the script, then they did a great job.I'll be interested in seeing the other films these guys have made to see if they can do any better.