The Devil's Chair

Despite the effort made, the British-American production The Devil's Journey does not deliver anything sensational. Rather, it is just a piece of screenwriting trickery. Although it is clear from the start that everything can be explained, the plot between the beginning and the end is rather predictable. It is only spiced up by the constant chatter of the main male protagonist, which I personally found rather annoying. Actually, it bothered me a lot. (11.05.2020)

Here and there, rather rarely, I come across a genre film where I find unexpected qualities, even though it missed its target audience and has a relatively sad rating. Unfortunately, this is not one of those rare cases. The problem does not lie in the fact that from the very first shot, it is clear that we are in deep B-movie waters. That we are dealing with second-rate actors, including the main character who is crucial for the atmosphere and overall impression, already makes things quite disappointing. However, that does not explain the one star I'm giving it. The main issue lies with the director himself. Mason is certainly not a B-movie director, as he clearly has the foundations of the profession in his blood, but he does not show us anything that would indicate any talent, filmmaking cleverness, and sophistication. He tries to achieve an effect with quick editing, handheld cameras, and above all, bloody splatters wherever you look. However, the idea presented is far from original and there are plenty of titles that do the same or almost the same in a much better and more impressive way. Overall impression: 25%. (19.02.2014)

After the pretty cool trailer, The Devil's Chair became one of my most anticipated films of the year, but a few minutes after pressing PLAY I got a cold shower. Did I really look forward to this? Boring, bad performances, boring, unlikeable characters, boring, hardly any blood, boring, etc. On top of that, the protagonist often shares his thoughts and opinions with the viewer and every time this happens, the frame freezes and won’t move again until he finishes his rant. After several such pauses, that becomes annoying, almost as much as the protagonist himself from the very beginning. 45 minutes in, the story switches to its better and more entertaining half, which is still worse than what I expected, but at least it didn’t piss me off so much. The ending delivers a nice final twist (which is a bit unoriginal today, but it was different in 2006, when the film was released) that convinced me that that hour and a half hadn’t been completely wasted. Overall, however, it’s still clear that this film is very far from what it could have been, just like Mason’s previous one, Broken. PS: the monster that appears for a moment about four times is pretty cool and deserves at the very least more space, or a better film. 50% (17.08.2008)