SnoReptilePlenty
Memorable, crazy movie
Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Scarlet
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
gavin6942
Danielle (Alanna Chisholm), a young psychology student, is trying to rebuild her life when she sublets a century-old Victorian house. Unknowingly, she awakens an evil specter lurking in the dark recesses of her new home.From director Brett Sullivan ("Ginger Snaps II") and distributed by the now-defunct Alliance Atlantis, this is a relatively low-key film that does not command one's attention. Indeed, it is subtle, and really only exists to showcase the so-called "panic chair" (which only shows up later on).There is some interesting back story about a mesmerist, a child killer and a professor, but it is all sort of strange. May be brilliant or awful, just too hard to say.
sitenoise
Horror films are a gamble but it's easy to tell fairly quickly when it's time to hold 'em and when it's time to fold 'em. The direction, cinematography, and character introductions reveal promptly where the film is aiming at on the stupid scale and how serious an effort it's going to be. The Chair was shot on video but looks remarkably good to my eyes and Brett Sullivan's direction is smartly done—not so much in the way he captures the scenes but for the way he gets to them—the camera peers around a corner, or from across the room, from inside a closet, or it nestles itself on the ceiling and observes from there. It's not rocket science to make those choices for a film about a haunted house, but Sullivan's execution is inspired.The Chair begins with a few black & white moments of spooky snippets and background data on mesmerism. Then we're brought to the present in the presence of a blond pony-tail. Uh-oh ... a quick shot of pony-tail girl from the attic of the house she's about to move into letting us know there's something up there, and pony-tail's off to the bathtub to relax and pleasure herself. Umm ...Alanna Chisholm plays the pony-tail and looks like she could be Nicole Sullivan's twin sister. Her performance makes this film a winner. Once she's out of the tub and on to developing her character it's refreshing to see she's not playing it anywhere near bimbo. She's got big expressive eyes and a quirky yet confident mixed-uppedness about her that's appealing, inviting both fear and empathy. We know she's medicated and has a history of breakdowns, which she uses to her advantage. Since she is operating under suspicion of not having both oars in the water, she is unpredictable—but never hysterical. She never imagines anything; it's all really happening. It's just up to her grad school self to find the paradigm it all fits into. When her sister and the cleavage she rode in on arrive to act as the reasonable foil, Chisholm begins playing with a cold determination that works as a transition to the possessed by the "never quite dead 100 year old spirit of a killer" that invades her body, character.Said spirit belongs to a man who was mesmerized right at the moment of death—while sitting in a spooky chair in the very house Chisholm now inhabits—and then buried alive causing him to remain in a state of horrifying limbo for a hundred years—a fate the mesmerist feels is worse than death for the man who killed his daughter, or something like that ... so there's some plot going on behind Chisholm's performance.Plot is a difficult thing and even if we give it only a 3.8 on a scale of 10 it could still win a batting title. What interests me more are the nuances and subtle humor Sullivan and Chisholm bring to the proceedings, which also grant the film membership in the much vaunted Horror version2 category.When it's time to explore the dark and secret room they discover in the house (plot), Chisholm and her sister's cleavage use one of those flashlights you have to wind up to get any light from. It's done without fanfare, making it quite funny. The big race-against-time action sequence toward the end of the film seems to fizzle out empty and unproductive, deliberately, making it funny and absurd. My favorite bits of the film, however, are when Chisholm settles down to research and does a slow roll of her neck, cracking it. Makes creepy noises.
joemamaohio
A movie about a young girl with some demons in her past moves into an old house that's haunted by the spirit of a man who was 'mesermized' to death by a famous mesmertist.That's the basic premise of this movie. While it's not the worst B-rated flick I've seen, it's not the best. The acting is palpable, the camera angles and effects they used were slightly above-par, but there was just that little 'umph' that was missing. It was creepy enough, but you didn't really feel for the characters like you should've. And the ending was extremely predictable.Still, though, not too bad.
screencinderelly
Saw and loved it at the Montreal Film Festival and saw it again recently, and liked it even more. Visually and in terms of story and character, this movie makes the most out of small moments and details, gathering them together, slowly but surely, toward a shocking climax. I was really impressed by Danielle's slow transformation from a troubled, pretty grad student to the masculinized host of the killer's spirit who takes possession of her. Also the head-scratching, how'd-they-do-that? spooky special effects (they make pancake batter really scary). You don't see this kind of subtlety and careful crafting too often in horror flicks.An unconventional supernatural thriller, beautifully shot and acted. Definitely not to every horror fan's taste, but I'm surprised to see the 1-votes. If you don't need buckets of blood and female hysterics to make you good and scared, this is a smart, well-made, satisfying, truly indie film.
