fedor8 TC starts with a quote by Houdini: "Over the years, I have exposed numerous spiritualists and clairvoyants as charlatans… but the mesmerizing powers of Mordecai Zymytryk still to this day baffle and haunt me… "Some people are easily baffled and haunted, aren't they? Evidently, Houdini had been royally played by a top-notch charlatan, and perhaps by "numerous" he meant "two and a half", and perhaps by "mesmerizing" he meant "sexy and irresistible". (Houdini: a closet gay?). Houdini may have been a master escape-artist, but he was certainly no intellectual, as is evident from this miserable statement. Certainly if he could see this movie now, he'd have second thoughts about Mordecai, and he might cringe more than a bit for being the provider of this quote – not to mention being associated with this cheap B-movie.Considering how the script attempts to build up Zymytryk as an omnipresent magic god of sorts, it was rather surprising and highly puzzling to have this supposedly brilliant death-defying powerful witch-master turn out to be such an utter failure. Mr. Z pretty much gets everything wrong in the highly moronic "grand finale"; he messes up his own plan, allowing a ghost of a dumb child-murderer to outwit him. I guess there is only so much power you can have, even with three Ys and one Z in your name.One way of starting an awful movie is certainly shoving a useless dumb quote in the viewer's (hopefully tiny) brain, followed by cheap titillation. By this I mean the early scene in which the blond masturbates in a bathtub; cheap because we don't get to see her boobs, which is fairly annoying. I've always maintained that if your script sucks, the least you can do is undress your actresses. (Unless they happen to be Vanessa Redgrave or Ellen Degeneres, in which case you pay them to keep their clothes on.)One way of continuing a movie as bad as this is to make sure that the blood looks like Heinz ketchup and that there is practically no tension in any of the scenes. The fact that a perky blond is trying hard - but failing - in being menacing makes things worse. That ensures that the overall crapiness is maintained at a consistently high level.One way of concluding a bad movie is to turn the kid (who's an awful actor) into Damien. Certainly a successful ending – if crap is what you aimed for all along. And from what I've seen during these laughable 90 minutes, that is exactly what the film-makers wanted. They set out to make garbage and they ended up with garbage: mission accomplished, so everyone can go home and pour their Heinz ketchup on their cold low-budget pizzas.TC's obvious B-movie roots ensure that its very fake-looking ketchupy blood holds as much eerie power as a farm chicken hatching eggs. Like most modern B-movie horror films, TC is an abysmal failure. A weak soundtrack, mediocre camera-work, and average/sub-par actors make this an experience worthy of immediate deletion from the mind. You don't need to have Alzheimers to completely obliterate the memory of these 90 minutes just an hour after its viewing.The blonde's sister is fairly cute. That's about it.

charlytully Unlike so many other recent movies of all genres filmed in Toronto, this one does not make any blatant attempts to pass itself off as being set in the United States, or, worse yet, try to foist off total idiots as being Americans. So in THE CHAIR's opening minutes, when a neurotic psychology student on anti-psychotic medication moves into a creepy 150-year-old house as the sole occupant and immediately experiences frightening paranormal events, one can easily suspend disbelief and think "yeah, eh, in Canada they probably have just one opening for student housing at a time in a college town." And when the troubled student's sister, who holds down a 9-to-5 job, gets called across town at 4 a.m. every other night to stay in her sibling's bed until sunrise, NEVER ONCE SUGGESTING MAYBE BOTH SISTERS SHOULD SLEEP IN THE WORKING SISTER'S HOME, one can suspend disbelief again and muse "yeah, eh, maybe Canadian law makes it a hate crime not to humor the death wishes of the mentally ill." Therefore, while the movie itself rates an above average 6/10 as a horror flick, I highly recommend THE CHAIR for anyone interested in quaint Canadian customs.

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.

KALE808 Maybe it's a testament to the low-key sex appeal of its star, Alanna Chisholm. Or the generally good direction and cinematography, but this film was definitely appealing. I usually can't get into films shot on video, but this one looked pretty good.Also, even though it has a slower pace, it was unrelenting up until the very end. I think for horror movies to be effective, on some level they have to be mean-spirited toward the viewer. The writer/director has to want to inflict a little psychological trauma in that 2 hours. This film doesn't seem like it's got what it takes to deliver that type of wallop, so it takes you by surprise at the end when it does.I would recommend it.