The Chair (2007) • USA

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 of 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 we're not alone, and she'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. It's her performance that 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.

★★★★

The Signal (2007/I) • USA • David Bruckner, Dan Bush, Jacob Gentry

Lotsa fun. I didn't know this was going to be a very funny movie. It's got blood and more blood, a decapitated talking head, dead bodies everywhere, and kill scenes with realistic and unnerving sound effects that will make you wince. Those aren't the funny parts.

At times AJ Bowen seems to be channeling Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame. He even looks like him in certain moments. The Signal has a surreal, over-the-top sensibility like Evil Dead, but it's humor is not derived from that. This film is witty and subtle; the humor more cerebral than gut funny. Scott Poythress turns in a wonderfully comedic performance as the third wheel.

This is akin to Dead End and Five Across the Eyes in its humor. It's not a spoof or send-up. I think this is a new genre-crunch for horror. Smart, gory without being torture porn, and funny. It's a cult classic in the making because it makes fun with the genre, not of the genre. It drags a little at the end but it's been a full meal up to that point.

★★★★

Five Across the Eyes (2006) • USA

Every frame of this real time 90 film is shot from inside the van. Yes, it's grainy and hand-held, but it's creatively envisioned and executed. You are the camera, along for the ride. When filming the girls changing a flat tire you can only get the shot via the side-view mirror. Priceless. Most of the humor in the film is achieved by being that omniscient, yet part of the mix, set of eyes. The one-liners are eaves-dropped upon, not thrown in your face.

This isn't gore, though there is a fair amount of blood splashed around. There is nothing supernatural. There is just waiting for the next, possibly horrible thing in store for these girls at the hands of a psycho soccer mom. When something really horrible happens it's downplayed, like pulling a screwdriver from between the legs of one of the girls, or watching from inside the van as another girl gets a shotgun up the butt. Another girl gets her mouth taped shut after loading with fish hooks. But these 'gorable' moments aren't the focus. You really have to see this film to enjoy how subtle and understated it is.

What I found most entertaining in Five Across the Eyes was the emotional back-and-forth between dread-filled screaming teenagers and the dead-pan humor—which is NOT AT ALL like cheap horror comedy humor. This is not a send-up and it's not meant to be satire. The humor is achieved through the comic timing of the director and editor and the choices they make. There is no setup to the punches, you catch them peripherally, and that's what makes them good.

A mom with a big perfectly white teeth smile haunts these girls. Genius. How many more masked hillbillies can a horror fan take?

The sound design of the dialog is a little sub-par . I really want to watch this again with subtitles. It seems that the psycho soccer mom is charging the girls with ruining her family and she scolds them over and over at extremely high volume. It's as if she is taking the role of uber-mom to all these girls. She's rather large physically, not fat, and has a very big mouth (filled with perfect white teeth, as I mentioned before ... and they almost glow, adding to the surreal nature of things). That we can't really discern what her motives are puts us in the same state of mind as the girls.

The girls themselves go back and forth between bitching at one another to last-rites declarations of love and apology as they sense the end may be near.

Forget Blair Witch, and all its pretentiousness. If you've seen the Spanish horror film REC and liked it, give this one a shot. I thought it was going to be a cheap exploitation flick. The fact that the first thing the soccer mom does when she catches the girls is make them take all their clothes off and put them in a pile and then make one of the girls pee on them, well ... I thought, yep, exploitation it is. But then the crazy lady just drives off. And there we are, as befuddled by what just happened as the girls.

★★★★