Killer Sofa (2019)

It's not a sofa. It's a recliner. One of those chairs that leans back and sticks out a footrest. If you're a fan of Frasier, it's as if Martin's old comfy chair had suddenly become homicidal. In New Zealand. Yes, from the land that gave us that film about killer sheep and that movie and TV show about the silly vampires, comes another horror thing that is absurd. That said, it's not bad. It just doesn't quite live up to its premise. It's as if someone had binge-watched a lot of ridiculous Eighties 'possessed object movies' and tried to pair it up with Edogawa Rampo's famous story about a chair. The result is a right old mess, but an entertaining one.

The story begins with Frederico, a bloke who spends far too much time on the internet talking about horror and the occult. Ahem. Fortunately, when we meet him Frederico is about to be dismembered by a bloke with an electric saw. We see the chair in the background, just in case we missed the misleading title. Then we meet a likeable family of furniture selling folk who retrieve the chair from a storage unit to resell. It ends up in the apartment of Francesca (Pimio Mei), a beautiful dancer who has a lot of trouble with creepy stalkers, of whom Frederico was the creepiest. Now, of course, he's dead. Or is he?

It becomes clear from the start that some complicated malarkey is going on, and writer/director Bernie Rao does a decent job of juggling quite a complex backstory for the killer recliner with some entertaining mayhem. This film is an object lesson in how to make furniture seem quite dangerous. Some of the time. A bit. Assuming the victims are the usual horror movie idiots who don't notice a large chair creeping up on them. A combination of a plucky teen girl and her grandad, a disgraced rabbi (possibly the only one in NZ?) finally thwart the menace before it can do something plush and awful to the lovely Francesca.

Or do they?

No. 

But by that point I didn't care very much. I had made it to the end of a horror movie about a recliner. I am not a sadder or a wiser man, but that's showbiz. 

Oh, and Killer Sofa also goes under the title My Lazy Boy, My Lover. Because why not?