Aaron Schimberg makes dark comedy from the way people judge appearances. His feel for discomfort serves The Chair Company well, though its awkward scenes sometimes continue after the joke has finished.
Fi1m perspective
In The Chair Company (2025), Ron takes a broken office chair personally and starts investigating. Schimberg helps make the search funny and unsettling, although the series sometimes prolongs the embarrassment beyond the joke. Tim Robinson's performance and the supporting cast give us good reason to stay with it. We found the search unsettling because the places Ron visits look so ordinary. The directors let his suspicion grow without requiring us to believe he has understood those places correctly.
His features began with Go Down Death (2013), followed by Chained for Life (2018) and A Different Man (2024). The later work repeatedly returns to facial disfigurement, performance and the way people judge appearances. Chained for Life examines disability through film production, asking what happens when cinema turns people into subjects. It does not pretend that making a film about disability automatically means treating its subjects well. Actor Adam Pearson has worked with Schimberg on two films, and producer Vanessa McDonnell on three.
Schimberg directed three episodes of The Chair Company, and the credit for its unease belongs to more than one person. Fellow director Andrew DeYoung shares that understanding of how threatening the investigation needs to feel. Ashley Connor's cinematography makes everyday surroundings sinister without settling the question of Ron's judgement. Production designers Jason Singleton and Rocio Gimenez give the odd characters places that look convincingly ordinary. These are useful collaborators for a director interested in how appearances affect what people believe.
The reservation is about timing. There are scenes in The Chair Company where we have grasped the embarrassment and are still being asked to sit through it, with too little extra laughter for the wait. Schimberg's interest in discomfort is worth having, but discomfort alone cannot carry a scene indefinitely. Start with the series for Robinson and the unsettling investigation, allowing a little patience for scenes that have already made their point.
Biography
Aaron Schimberg is an American filmmaker. His debut feature Go Down Death (2013) closed the Fantasia Film Festival. His second feature Chained for Life (2018) premiered at BAMcinemaFest and was released theatrically by Kino Lorber.
Schimberg's third feature A Different Man (2024), starring Sebastian Stan and distributed by A24, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He directed three episodes of the series The Chair Company (2025). He is married to producer Vanessa McDonnell, who has worked on all his films.
