About JE Smith
Location: Irving, Texas
Occupation: Freelance
Bio: JE Smith, aka Jeff S., is a forty-something guy who was born in Illinois, but has been living in the wilds of Dallas, Texas for almost twenty years. He has been a movie nut ever since seeing Escape from the Planet of the Apes at Steeleville Theater in 1971 and is also obsessed with Doctor Who, Ultraman, Star Trek, The X Files, Batman, Spider-Man, Doc Savage and many other pop culture icons. For fifteen years (1981 - 1996) he published the sf/horror filmzine Wet Paint, and tried his hand at self-publishing his own comics with Bulletproof (1999, 3 issues) and Complex City (2000 - 2003, 4 issues and a trade paperback), both of which bombed. He's been writing film reviews for almost thirty years and is just getting the hang of it. Married to the lovely Barbara for over 16 years, and owned by a sleepy cat named Max.
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After a few months on the festival circuit, Brett Sullivan’s creepy The Chair goes direct to DVD.
Awash in a horror film market filled with creepy-kid Asian remakes (and their originals), flaccid, overproduced PG-rated “shockers,” and grisly, snuffy torture porn, The Chair is a refreshingly old-fashioned horror film that takes the time to get us involved with its characters, and amasses its unnerving ambiance brick by tingly brick.
Alanna Chisholm stars as Danielle, a young psychology student with a history of mental illness, who moves into a sub-let Victorian house while attending university. Almost immediately, she begins to notice that strange things are happening, but it is not until she discovers a hidden room that the true secret of the house begins to emerge: a hundred years earlier, a child-killer named Edgar Crowe was taken to the house by the mesmerist Mordechai Zymytryk, who hypnotized Crowe at the moment of death, and imprisoned his soul in a music box. To the concern of her sister Anna (very gorgeous Lauren Roy), and her still-pining ex-boyfriend Ryan (Nick Abraham), Danielle begins to exhibit more and more characteristics of the long-dead Crowe, including the construction of a bizarre, ghastly “panic chair.”
Possession is a time-honored motif in the horror genre, and while The Chair doesn’t really do anything startlingly original with the concept, it is so carefully crafted and smartly directed that it emerges head-and-shoulders above most current horror fare. Scripted by Michael Capellupo (from a story by director Brett Sullivan, and tailored to the location where the film was shot), The Chair does what precious few horror films these days take the time to do: it builds. Although Danielle begins to experience supernatural oddities almost immediately, it is well over an hour before any overt violence occurs, and director Sullivan cannily piles creepy scenes one on top of the other like an expert bricklayer, generating suspense through the most mundane things – such as the whine of a hand-cranked flashlight, which goes dead at the most inopportune moments. The cast is also first-rate, crafting realistic characters that believably inhabit this off-kilter world. Alanna Chisholm deserves special mention, turning in a finely-tuned, endearing performance that makes us care about what happens to Danielle, even as she sinks into the darkest depths of Crowe-mania.
It’s a tricky task to pull off a “slow burn” horror film such as this, but Sullivan – previously a film editor who made his feature directorial debut with the Ginger Snaps sequel Unleashed – keeps the pace sinewy, making the most of a terrific location that is, in fact, his own house. Such an intimate familiarity with the surroundings lends an unforeseen verisimilitude to the proceedings, and makes for an unusually effective environment. It’s an old cliché, but true here: the house itself is a character in the film, and quite a fascinating one.
Sullivan’s realistic, non-bombastic approach does falter occasionally; the offhanded way that Danielle handles the music box makes it unclear on first viewing that this is the repository of Crowe’s essence, and some things don’t quite ring true, such as the bit where Danielle, terrified, calls Anna at four in the morning, and when she arrives she’s dressed in sexy outfit more fitting for a hot date than a crack-of-dawn disturbance. There are also a couple elements of the conclusion – unmentionably spoilery – that may cause the slightest of eye-rolls. Still, I’m happy to let such things slide with a movie as subtle and nifty as this. Which just goes to show, when you’ve got the goods, the nit-picky stuff is easy to forgive.
A rare quality release for LionsGate, this DVD presents the film in a crisp transfer with only a few special features. There’s a 17-minute “Behind the Scenes” feature, which – as opposed to the usual talking-head interview stuff – is actually a collection of raw footage, much of it centering on some of the complex “in camera” shots the crew pulled off. The audio commentary features writer/director Brett Sullivan, producer Doug Patterson, and co-writer/actor Michael Capellupo. It’s an amiable affair with a lot of good information on the production, though the gang does tend to go silent a bit too often. Also included is a way-too-spoilery trailer, and a bunch of previews for other LionsGate films.
While it’s disappointing that The Chair couldn’t snag a theatrical release, at least the DVD will give the film a chance for a wider audience than the festival circuit ever could. Calling the film old-fashioned may seem like a backhanded compliment, but the intention is just the opposite: I wish more modern horror films would take the time to assemble a solid story that truly involves the viewer, and envelopes them in its atmospheric world-building. The Chair may not quite claim a slot as an all-time classic, but it certainly aspires to be something more than ordinary, and in that it succeeds. Don’t come expecting a high body count, or any kind of gorefest, and you just may find The Chair to be one of the more satisfying horror films in recent memory.
Check out my interview with director Brett Sullivan here.
