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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE DEVIL’S CHAIR (2007)

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DIRECTED BY: Adam Mason

FEATURING: Andrew Howard, , Louise Griffiths, Elize du Toit,

PLOT: Having witnessed his girlfriend’s brutalization and disappearance by an evil chair, Nick returns four years later with a group of psychology students to recreate the experience.

COMMENTS: The Devil’s Chair could have been a pretty neat movie: a ’70s / ’80s throwback, telling a tale about evil science intersecting with dark occultism: about a sinister device crafted by a mad psychologist to separate the body from the soul in a manner most horrible. Alternatively, it could have been a decent exploration of criminal insanity, from a skewed perspective maintained up through until the very end, leaving us uncertain about the grisly narrative we’ve endured. Instead, it was a third thing, facetiously tossing aside and spitting on the better possibilities.

Despite this decision, The Devil’s Chair has glimmers of promise and possibility. Nick is hitting well out of his league with Sammy, a gorgeous young woman whom he takes on a date to an abandoned mental institution; the pair drops acid and things go pear-shaped. He convinces himself (and us) that the sinister device bloodily violates her before poofing her out of existence. The psychology department at Cambridge is intrigued both by his condition (it must have been a psychotic vision) and the occult possibilities (Dr. Willard knows more than he initially lets on). They take Nick to the scene of the awful for psycho-supernatural tests and observations.

What the movie does right is mostly in the title. The furniture piece in question is one prop I’d be happy to own. A combination of electric chair and sacrificial restraining device, it springs into action when a hidden needle pierces the skin of any finger foolish enough to rest within a cunningly-placed aperture. The doctor behind this machine is one of those classic “brilliant scientists gone wacky,” and the parallel world (with its requisite flickering lights, endless corridors, and gooey-boney demon thing) is derivative, but delightfully imagined. Matt Berry’s presence as an academic toff—at one point clad in a radiogram-skeleton shirt, long underwear, and cowboy boots—adds a chuckle.

But alas, the whole thing feels as if director Adam Mason watched too many movies. He constantly sabotages the experience through snarky asides and observations, rendering his protagonist not only unsympathetic, but also irritating. (This is only worsened by a tendency to freeze the frame as Nick spits out his dumb little witticisms.) There’s also an odd little tirade arriving at what should have been a stirring demonic climax, admonishing the viewer for watching this kind of thing in the first place. Still, The Devil’s Chair had enough momentum to carry me through the “Ahahah, gotcha!” bloody finale, and makes me hopeful that another filmmaker out there might swipe some of its better elements. Bring unto me the horror throwback about an evil chair and the dark arts behind its manifestations.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…The Devil’s Chair, alas, is dumb sensationalism that trusts blood-buckets dumped on thesps are enough to raise a fright, then undercuts even that via laddish, winking audience asides… The eventual twist only makes the scenario seem more crassly lacking in motivational logic.” — Dennis Harvey, Variety (contemporaneous)

The Devil's Chair (Unrated) [DVD]

The Devil's Chair (Unrated) [DVD]
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CAPSULE: HOUSE OF SCREAMING GLASS (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: David R. Williams

FEATURING: Lani Call

PLOT: After her mother’s death, Elizabeth inherits her grandmother’s school building and moves in.

House of Screaming Glass (2024)

COMMENTS: In a story such as this one, told in this particular style, a good deal is left up to the viewer to either figure out—sooner or later—or choose to overlook. It requires a certain ambience, and a compelling lead. She needn’t be a great actor so much as a curious presence (in both meanings of the modifier). Crafting a liminal space as much as a narrative film, in this dreamy wibbly-bit between sleep and waking, between story and mood, there can be a captivating pathway for the viewer to follow along. While Lani Call nails her task as protagonist—indeed, as the only human character—of House of Screaming Glass, at the half-way mark David R. Williams throws a Necronomicon-sized spanner into the work’s erstwhile smoothly-ticking gears, knocking the entire experience into a gooey netherworld of tedium.

What the film does right is feature Lani Call. Her narration is deadpan, sometimes bordering on comatose, lulling the listener into a sort of mental surrender. Her character, Elizabeth, seems done with life before the movie has even begun, and a great deal of the House of Screaming Glass experience is us watching her looking at things in the creepy building she has come to own. (Worry not, she’s as confounded at the turn of events as we are, so we’re in good company.) She tours the abandoned, semi-converted school building in fast-motion, with the camera locked on her face (à la Angst-cam). We enter a daze with her as she builds routines and gets a feel for the place, talking to it in her narration. She plays a bit of piano and a strange entity approaches over her right shoulder. She finds some photo albums, and a child’s book of doodles—which holds a set of nudie photos, quite probably of her grandmother.

So far, David Williams has done well. You probably know the type of thing going on here—something akin to Enys Men, or a less minimalist Skinamarink. It is a meditative and repetitious experience, but summons growing ill-ease. But (oh, but!) at the half-way point, Williams decides this is not what he wants to do any more. Improbably, Elizabeth finds a box full of occult props, tools, liquor, and reading material. The revelation scene, as she drinks the potion from the tentacle bottle and looks over a tome on loan from the Evil Dead museum, is pretty darn cool: colors sicken and glowing text cycles across the screen as she gains understanding.

But it comes at too high a cost, as far as I’m concerned. It is here that House of Screaming Glass stops being interesting and becomes just kind of gross. The thorough gear-shifting wrenched me from the reverie the film had worked so hard to put me under, and I spent the next forty-five minutes Hm-ing, Hrm-ing, and occasionally wishing there were fewer skin lesions. Better luck next time, maybe? I’m certainly interested to see what Lani Call ends up doing. She’s better than what Elizabeth is ultimately obliged to go through.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In due course we will get to body horror… we enter a world in which hallucination is added to the litany of possible visual and psychological interpretations… The juxtaposition doesn’t quite work, and yet its very oddness signals that we have now crossed over into a different interior space… A lovingly made entry in the tradition of feminine psycho-horror, House Of Screaming Glass pits a stubbornly lifeless vérité against the allure of the Gothic.”—Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film (contemporaneous)

House of Screaming Glass [DVD]

House of Screaming Glass [DVD]
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CAPSULE: LO (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Travis Betz

FEATURING: Ward Roberts, Jeremiah Birkett, Sarah Lassez

PLOT: Justin uses a spell book to summon the infernal spirit Lo to help him see his dead girlfriend once again, but the demon uses every trick possible to avoid fulfilling the command.

Still from Lo (2009)

COMMENTS: There have been many movies about demonic possession, but few about demonic summoning… and no other, that I can think of, where almost the entire movie plays out from inside the safety of a pentagram. (Lo‘s closest competition for time spent inside a thaumaturgic circle might be Viy.) For the first five minutes we watch Justin, in a pitch black room lit solely by candles, painstakingly (if clumsily) construct this magical barrier, following the instructions etched on the yellowed parchment of an ancient grimoire, christening the ritual with his own blood. He then speaks the magic incantation and successfully summons the demon Lo, a pathetic yet powerful devil with a partly exposed brain and useless crushed legs which force him to painfully drag himself from out of the inky blackness towards his summoner, angry and defiant but unable to cross the enchanted barrier and devour Justin’s soul. The spell Justin cast compels a boon from this creature. You see, he saw a demon drag his girlfriend off to Hell, and now he wants her back—or at least to see her one last time. And Lo must meet Justin’s demand—although, in classic Mephistophelian fashion, the spirit isn’t above resorting to temptations, tricks, half-truths, and twisting Justin’s requests in any way he can.

The way Lo achieves its aesthetic aims on a minimal budget is nothing less than magical. Darkness is an ally; the set is a essentially black box, props are minimal, and only the demon costumes consume a significant amount of dollars. The flashbacks that supply the backstory are told through reenactments on a stage Lo conjures in Justin’s darkened apartment. There are red curtains, applause, visible stagehands, and comedy and tragedy masks that react to the proceedings. For additional color, Lo also summons a fuzzy green demon rat, a lizard-headed Nazi demon, a pair of damned silhouettes who press against a saran wrap wall as they describe the torments of Hell, and a couple of (mediocre, but welcome) musical numbers.

The story advances almost entirely through the antagonistic dialogues of the demon and his summoner. Chances are good that you will guess the twist ending early on; but it’s such a perfect construct that it doesn’t detract from the poignancy of the reveal. Who can’t relate to falling in love with the wrong person, a love that might be mutual and true, but which fate and circumstance dictates must be temporary? And who can’t relate to the compulsion to understand the true reasons behind a disappearance, however horrible the answer might be? As breakup movies go, Lo supplies a real, mythic catharsis.

With all that it has going for it, I would love to nominate Lo for our supplemental Apocryphally Weird list. Is it ingenious? Definitely. Engaging? Undoubtedly. Passionate? Sincerely. Recommended? You know it. Weird? Ah, here is where the favorable adjectives falter. Lo is well off the beaten path of the average filmgoer—the one who doesn’t frequent this site. What we see in Lo, though, isn’t so much weird as offbeat, rare, counter-Hollywood: unusual in its approach, by necessity, but not so far out-there that it makes us question our notions of reality, or if what a film can and should be. So, despite the fact that we give Lo a high rating, we won’t be adding it to our List. That doesn’t mean we’re giving you a pass to skip it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a peculiar and experimental horror film about love gained, love lost, and the demons that can stand in your way. ‘Lo’ is an odd twist on Faust, and an entertaining indie film that impresses with its bare essential filmmaking.”–Felix Vaquez, Cinema Crazed (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by Kat, who argued “I’m a little surprised not to see Travis Betz’s Lo (2009) on the suggestion list. Like Ink, its imitations and inspirations are pretty obvious– but I personally think it outstrips Ink in a few key areas, never over-stepping its budget. I found it a little more bizarre, too, in the way it takes a simple trope of a premise and reels continually between drama and dark comedy.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)