On a night charged with dark rites, Frederico Olsen performs a voodoo ritual in front of an old recliner, and the moment abruptly turns brutal as Warren Lee cuts off his own legs. A severed foot is found soon after, kicking off a police interview with Frederico’s ex-girlfriend, Francesca, and her friend Maxi. The cursed chair seems to move through the town’s shadows, and it somehow lands in the hands of Maxi’s grandfather, Jack, a former Rabbi whose troubled past has left him at odds with the community.
Jack touches the recliner and is hit with a surge of psychic visions, convincing him the chair is possessed by a Dybbuk, a malevolent spirit tethered to the living. He warns that the chair might be more than a haunted relic, hinting at a history that could awaken dangerous forces. The recliner then ends up outside Francesca’s apartment, and with the help of her boyfriend, TJ, they decide to bring it inside, pulling themselves deeper into a puzzle that links ancient legends with modern violence.
To understand the chair, Tohunga Makutu becomes a key figure, guiding Jack as he digs into the possibility of Dybbuks and other ancestral curses. Meanwhile, Francesca experiences a strange dream about the chair, and when she wakes, a cascade of romantic objects appears around her—an unsettling clue that she cannot ignore. The next morning, she finds unusual items placed in her space and begins to fear that TJ might be involved, though his confusion mirrors her own.
The investigation widens as the police uncover a stash of voodoo paraphernalia at Frederico’s apartment and bring Francesca in again for questioning. In a terrifying turn, the recliner attacks TJ, stabbing him; he survives but is forced to retreat to his mother’s house. That night, the chair returns and fatally attacks him, sealing TJ’s fate and pushing the case toward a chilling theory: a serial killer is targeting Francesca’s ex-boyfriends.
The search leads to Ralph Kilkelly, Maxi’s cousin, who is suspected as the prime suspect. He breaks into Francesca’s apartment, only to be killed by the recliner in a brutal moment of possession—an act that shocks everyone and complicates the investigation. Jack’s warnings about the chair intensify the tension, but Maxi, driven by fear and confusion, returns to Francesca’s apartment, where she witnesses the chair disposing of Ralph’s body and is forced to jump from a window, landing unconscious in a dumpster.
As Francesca and the police regroup, they discover Ralph’s corpse at the apartment, and she is driven to despair, even contemplating suicide on a cliff. Jack calls her, pulling her back toward the city, where a long-buried history finally comes to light. In Akaroa during the 1800s, witches Valerie and Gerard Collette poisoned people to steal souls, and when the town mob burned Gerard, Valerie transferred her spirit into a local woman—Francesca’s great-grandmother. That spirit has survived through generations, binding itself to Francesca, while Gerard’s essence remains attached to the recliner.
Jack devises a plan to contain the spirits in two dybbuk boxes and burn them, but a heart attack interrupts his effort. Francesca resolves to confront the recliner on her own, dousing it with gasoline and preparing to burn it. Just as the flames threaten to consume the chair, the police arrive with a shocking claim: Francesca’s body had been inside the chair the whole time, the vessel to which Gerard’s soul had clung. They believe that shooting the chair could dispel the spirit, ending the immediate danger.
Yet the nightmare continues. In a tense aftermath, Francesca lures one of the officers to her apartment, where she poisons him and transfers Gerard’s soul from the recliner into his body, as Valerie has completely taken over Francesca’s own humanity. The two murder another police officer and flee, a chilling deviance that Maxi witnesses, leaving the town to reckon with a truth that feels almost supernatural in its reach and consequences.
