THE DEVIL'S CHAIR

Nick and his girlfriend Sammy break into an abandoned asylum and, under the influence of drugs, begin to exchange intimate affections. Sammy sits on what appears to be an old torture chair, but gets trapped and then disappears; Nick is accused of the girl's murder and locked up in a psychiatric hospital. After four years, the boy is released and entrusted to the care of Dr. Willard, who decides to take him back to the scene of the "crime" to discover the mysteries hidden within the walls of the abandoned asylum. Do you remember surprise bags? Maybe someone recalls these colorful plastic bags that were sold until about fifteen years ago in many newsstands and that attracted the attention of children so much; inside there were a lot of trinkets, unsold items ranging from coloring books, WWF stickers, toy soldiers or miniature animals, puzzles of about ten pieces and things like that. In short, a package capable of attracting attention and ready to promise things that it never actually offered: some children were satisfied, played for a quarter of an hour with the all-green soldier and the polystyrene airplane, and then threw everything into a corner of the room, where it remained until the mom passed to clean, others were outraged and started to cry in disappointment. "The Devil's Chair" is not too different from a surprise bag: it promises blood, torture, tentacled monsters and in the end offers a watered-down story, cherry syrup spilled on the actors, a guy dressed in black corrected in post-production and, otherwise, a lot of boredom. Adam Mason directed and wrote the screenplay, that young Englishman who, in partnership with the inseparable Simon Boyes, also directed the effective survivor mixed torture porn "Broken". This time, however, they abandon the dark forests and psychological and physical torture and venture into beginner's occultism, made of human sacrifices and imaginative parallel and infernal dimensions. So far so good, the colorful bag is there! However, Mason does not want to limit himself to staging a simple horror that offers monsters and blood, the intention is slightly more "highbrow", the meta-textual reflection path is attempted, made of ironic voice-overs and unexpected narrative twists. Even better, you will say, the bag is not only colorful but also bulky and heavy! Too bad that once the mechanism is discovered, the toy that goes by the name "The Devil's Chair" turns out to be the biggest nonsense that the viewer could imagine. The plot is exhausted after just ten minutes: him drugged up to his shoelaces, her a prostitute who loses her skin; him accused of murder and locked up, is released and must face reality. That's it, served poorly both from a narrative point of view (the voice-over gets tiresome after two minutes, but know that it is present for THE ENTIRE movie in an intrusive way) and visual (excessively overexposed photography and continuous freeze-frames that eventually tire). The gimmick that should put the viewer in a state of euphoria (and in some cases it has!) is the insistent extradiegetic element that places the film's protagonist as a accomplice-companion of the viewer, as if to accompany him in a little game for disillusioned cinephiles who have seen and tasted everything. The intention is snobbish and, needless to say, it turns out to be completely unsuccessful, bringing "The Devil's Chair" closer to a confused stream of consciousness without meaning rather than an ironic staging of a "genre". The feeling you actually get is that the screenwriters started with the good will of wanting to really make something new, but they got stuck right away and, at the first difficulty, instead of wisely going back on their steps to see which gear was not working, they continued with the awareness that the damage was done and irreparable. Exhausting going in circles, one-dimensional characters, gratuitous nonsense justified by the usual meta-textuality, a final twist that has no logic perceptible by the human intellect. Only meager consolation: the characters talking to each other and with the viewer, reaffirm that the story in which they find themselves acting is a "piece of shit" and what the viewer is witnessing is a "series B movie, poorly written and acted by dogs"... at least they are aware of it! Even if this awareness of results makes one think about the final usefulness of the operation. The cherry on top of this cake gone bad due to expired ingredients is the much-touted level of atrocities. Watching the trailer and remembering "Broken" we could think of what kind of deviant entertainment awaits us in "The Devil's Chair", but remember the surprise bag! The film in question is full of "fake" violence, the classic much ado about nothing that leaves you with a dry mouth. Oh, the cherry syrup (it's a low-budget film, the glucose one cost too much) abounds, but the expedient of throwing the red liquid in buckets on the actors and the floor is used, so that everything seems bloody, but in the end the murders all happen off-screen, there is not a scratch, not a cut or a bruise, only some screams or moans to simulate suffering. A film of those that had not been seen for a long time.