KILLER SOFA (2019)

Studio:      High Octane Pictures
Director:    Bernie Rao
Writer:      Bernie Rao
Producer:  Bernie Rao
Stars:     Piimio Mei, Nathalie Morris, Jim Baltaxe, Jed Brophy, Angelica Thomas, Stacey King, James Cain, Jordan Rivers, Sean Fleming, Hamish Boyle, Sarah Munn, Harley Neville, Grant Kereama

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two detectives and a former rabbi investigate the strange case of a demonically possessed, murderous reclining chair seemingly obsessed with an alluring dancer. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Obsessed with his ex-girlfriend Francesca Morton, occultist Frederico Olsen hires veterinarian Warren Lee to saw off his legs so he can hide inside a reclining chair.

Believing Frederico to be dead after finding his severed limbs, police inspectors Bob Gravy and Roseanne Grape question Francesca, who works as a dancer. Francesca mentions that she had a restraining order against Frederico since he was unusually infatuated with her, just like all of her suitors have been except current boyfriend TJ. Francesca’s best friend Maxi counters that TJ is immune because he is secretly gay.

Frederico arranges for Francesca to receive the chair, but it is mistakenly delivered to antique furniture storeowner and former rabbi Jack, who is also Maxi’s grandfather. When he touches the chair, Jack experiences a vision of a woman running through the woods in the 1800s. The chair still makes it to Francesca.

Jack tells his girlfriend Ashanti about his strange vision. Ashanti tells Jack he has a psychic gift like his rabbi father, who disapproves of Jack’s change of profession. Believing the chair to be possessed, Jack begins studying online videos about dybbuks taught by Tohunga Makutu.

Francesca has an entranced sexual experience while reclining in the chair. The next morning, Francesca follows candles to find saucers of cookies and tea waiting on the recliner. Francesca mistakenly assumes TJ was responsible.

The chair attacks TJ while he is alone in Francesca’s apartment. Believing the chair to be possessed, TJ decides to stay down the street at his mother’s place. Later that night, the chair stalks TJ and kills him with a sharpened upholstery spring.

Ashanti hypnotizes Jack so he can relive his vision. In his 1800s flashback, Jack witnesses a woman slitting her throat in front of another woman while a man screams. Jack realizes the woman poisoned someone, but doesn’t know why she killed herself.

Francesca is woken by a strange intruder who suddenly disappears. Francesca calls Maxi for comfort after subsequently seeing the chair moving on its own.

Gravy summons Francesca to the police station regarding TJ’s death. On her way out, Francesca blows off Maxi’s cousin Ralph Kilkelly, a suitor whose marriage proposal Francesca rejected. After she leaves, Ralph sneaks into Francesca’s apartment to masturbate on her clothes. The chair kills Ralph with an iron.

Gravy and Grape show Francesca and Maxi that TJ wrote the letters “FR” in blood before dying. Everyone takes the clue to mean “Francesca” instead of “Frederico.” Francesca and Maxi name Ralph as TJ’s possible murderer. Gravy and Grape theorize Ralph was working in tandem with Warren Lee.

Jack and Ashanti warn Maxi that the recliner is possessed and her friend Francesca is in danger. Maxi goes to Francesca’s apartment and finds the chair dumping Ralph’s body over a balcony. To escape, Maxi tries climbing out a window, but falls into a trashcan and knocks herself unconscious.

Gravy, Grape, and Francesca find Ralph’s corpse when they search Francesca’s apartment for Maxi. The chair whispers the name “Valerie” to Francesca, which causes her to drive away in fear.

Jack meets with Francesca to discuss the presumably possessed recliner. After she tells him what the chair said, Jack connects the name to the story of Valerie and Gerard Collete, two witches who lived in the French town of Akaroa in 17th-century New Zealand. Wanted for murdering victims with poisoned tea, a mob chased and killed Gerard. Valerie took her own life in front of peasant woman Marie St. Claire, whom Francesca identifies as her great-great grandmother. Marie later claimed she was possessed by Valerie’s spirit, a dybbuk with the power to evoke obsessive devotion.

Jack and Francesca conclude Francesca now hosts Valerie’s dybbuk. Jack further theorizes that Frederico’s occult magic opened a portal that allowed Gerard’s dybuuk to possess the recliner. The two spirits are now trying to reunite, although Jack is uncertain how this is possible since a dybbuk needs a human host and Frederico is supposedly dead.

Jack plots to build two dybbuk boxes, trap the spirits, and burn them. However, Jack suffers a heart attack. Francesca takes a dybbuk box and Ashanti calls thee paramedics for help.

While Gravy interrogates Warren Lee at the police station, Grape goes through Ralph’s effects at his apartment across the street from Francesca. Warren confesses to Gravy that Frederico paid Warren to saw off his legs so he could fit inside the recliner, but Frederico isn’t dead. Grape finds surveillance footage of Francesca revealing that the chair moved on its own.

Francesca confronts the chair to demand the dybbuk get into the box. Francesca tries setting fire to the recliner, but the chair continually blows out each match flame.

Gravy and Grape arrive in time to rescue Francesca. Gravy fires his gun at the chair. Frederico emerges from inside it. Gravy fires again and Frederico dies.

Unbeknownst to everyone else, Francesca recovers in the bathroom where she becomes possessed by Valerie’s dybbuk. Maxi emerges from the garbage can and reunites with Francesca.

In the aftermath, the coroner informs Grape that Frederico’s body had been dead for two weeks. Maxi watches one of Tohunga Makutu’s dybbuk videos and learns dybbuks use corpses to store souls until they can find new human hosts.

Gravy becomes infatuated with Francesca. Francesca poisons Gravy’s tea during a date in her apartment. Gravy dies and becomes possessed by Gerard Collete’s dybbuk.

Grape comes to Francesca’s apartment. Maxi pulls up outside and spies Francesca and Gravy murdering Grape. After Francesca and Gravy leave, Maxi goes inside to call the police. Maxi sees Francesca’s suffering spirit inside a button on the recliner.

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Review:

The tired term “critic-proof” isn’t only overused. It’s also pretty stupid. But by Crom, if there was every a film that can be considered truly immune to any rationally thought out, logically applied criticism, it’s “Killer Sofa.” The movie marches so confidently to the beat of its own devil-may-care drum that usual eye-rollers like amateur acting and nonsensical plot points are merely more feathers in a crazily captivating cap adorning a fascinating freak show of a film.

I don’t know anything about writer, director, producer, and cinematographer Bernie Rao aside from what IMDb tells me. According to those credits, “Killer Sofa,” which was originally titled “My Lover, My Lazy Boy,” appears to be Rao’s only released feature. However, Rao has no less than 60 shorts to his name, nearly half of which were produced in a two-year span between 2016-2018.

Quite frankly, I don’t want to learn anything else about Rao as it might falsify the incredible impression of him I’ve conjured in my mind. Based on the wild weirdness of “Killer Sofa” and his prolific output of experimental projects presumably few people have seen, I’m picturing a fringe filmmaker with the Euro-cowboy stylistic sense of “The Human Centipede’s” Tom Six and the adorable obliviousness to awfulness of “Troll 2” director Claudio Fragasso. Yet Rao also aspires to combine the artistic ambition of David Lynch with the attitudinal irreverence of Quentin Dupieux under the umbrella of a B-movie budget that could barely fund a straight-to-video “Puppet Master” sequel. Basically, I’m picturing an admirably wacko auteur operating unsupervised in a cobwebbed corner of underground cinema. Going off of what “Killer Sofa” delivers, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I realize I dropped a number of names in the previous paragraph. Here’s a few more: Bob Gravy, Roseanne Grape, Tohunga Makutu, and Jack. Those are all characters in “Killer Sofa,” the first two being police inspectors, so you’re getting a taste of the peculiar page the movie wants its audience on.

In keeping with the film’s complete disregard for fitting into neat little boxes and following regular rules, the killer sofa in “Killer Sofa” isn’t even a couch. The basic logline, if you absolutely must know even though it’s arguably irrelevant, concerns a murderous La-Z-Boy recliner possessed by a Jewish dybbuk. A comment posted to an online trailer likened the psycho seat to a cousin of Chairy from “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” and indeed, that is exactly what it looks like.

Rather than summarize the story, it’s better to simply list off the smorgasbord of sideshow deformities packed into the plot and let your raised eyebrow wonder about the rest. In addition to two detectives, the killer recliner, and the inexplicably alluring dancer the chair appears obsessed with, we also get a disgraced rabbi who runs a furniture store, his hoodoo-practicing girlfriend, a wackadoodle internet expert on demonology, flashbacks to a woman’s 17th-century suicide, an occultist ex-boyfriend who has a veterinarian saw off his limbs, a man masturbating on a hat and bra laid out to look like a face, reincarnation, witchcraft, and a mother accidentally discovering her son’s mutilated remains by sucking them into her vacuum. If that weren’t enough, the film hides a final reveal up its sleeve that is so bonkers, you clearly have no sense of fun if you don’t loudly snicker in astonishment at how unbelievably outrageous the endgame turns out to be.

The problem that low-budget horror films with kooky concepts often run into is being self-aware of their camp value, and then going too far with their comedy or not far enough. Although there are jokes, the accidental brilliance of “Killer Sofa” is that its campiness isn’t played for laughs at all. Greenhorn actors stay stone cold sober with performances that are occasionally painful, but they give it their inexperienced all without turning into cartoons. The setup may be 100% gonzo, but “Killer Sofa” plays out as a 100% serious thriller. Being that far in over its head only makes the movie that much more endearing.

To avoid overselling its appeal, expectations should be reeled in by clarifying what “Killer Sofa” isn’t. It’s not a traditional “so bad, it’s good” lark campaigning for cult classic status. It’s not necessarily tailored for laughing out loud with inebriated friends at a midnight movie screening either. I’d also stop short of putting it in a class with “Sharknado”-like silliness from Syfy.

“Killer Sofa” is just a quietly bizarre little New Zealand oddity with a subdued sort of strangeness. It’s a beautiful mess of a movie that’s entertainingly entrancing. Nothing about it should work and yet magically, virtually everything does.

I’m tempted to score “Killer Sofa” with a perfect 100/100 because I don’t know how it could be any better. I’m equally inclined to award a 0/100 because it concurrently couldn’t get much worse. I’m settling on a rating in green because “Killer Sofa” is definitely recommended for when you want to warp your mind by indulging in something irresistibly bad for your brain.

I hope my imaginary assessment of “Killer Sofa” creator Bernie Rao is correct because I want to see more madness come from his offbeat cinematic sensibilities. However, I do not want to see a “Killer Sofa” sequel or a push in a more overtly satirical direction. “Killer Sofa” captures lunatic lightning in a batty bottle. There’s no way this serendipitous recipe of one-time actors, WTF plotting, and backyard buffoonery could be intentionally recreated with such delightfully unironic results ever again.

Review Score: 75

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