I should have trusted the reviews, but then again, I wouldn't have mattered if it averaged a 1 score, I would have watched it for myself. I would have told you that I am a giant fan of Rob Zombie. I am not saying he can do no wrong. I think he, personally, is a d- bag. I hate his music. I think his HALLOWEEN remake is tolerable, at best, and the sequel is completely forgettable. On the other hand, I think that his two movies of the Firefly clan, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and DEVIL'S REJECTS are modern horror masterpieces and LORDS OF SALEM was good, as well, so I anticipated that despite bad reviews, I would still like this movie. How wrong I was.
I'm honestly struggling to come up with much positive to say but boy do I have a list of negatives. Let's start with his wife. She is the worst thing about most of his movies. While she fit her character as Baby and was pretty enough to tolerate, she was a big reason the HALLOWEEN sequel sucks. She is the main reason that LORDS OF SALEM is not better than it could have been, because of her lack of acting skills, then we get to this. I could have predicted, within the first 15 minutes, that she was our "final girl" that was going to survive all of this. I could have predicated that she would be the one to become a bada** for no reasonable explanation, other than the director's obsession with his wife. The girl can't act. In fact, she borders on being annoying and her voice is like nails on a chalkboard at times. Hire another actress for crying out loud, Rob, who might be able to make the audience have a little empathy for the character.
Now, let's get to the plot. The second that EG Daily shows up at the gas station, any idiot knows that she is the "scout" and things are about to go wrong. From there, Rob starts stealing material from every movie known to man and even stealing his own material repeatedly, starting with a scene in the middle of the road that is basically Otis on the cross stopping the tourists in HOUSE all over again. Our heroes wake up in a strange place to realize that they are now in THE RUNNING MAN, only King's story and the Arnold movie version are at least fun and let the audience have a some excitement with their violence. This movie just starts repeating itself over and over.
Rob must really like greasepaint. The clown look fit Captain Spaulding well in his first movies, but now we have a cast full of evil clown villains because, hey, that's not about the most overdone cliché in horror now, is it? The characters are barely unique from each other. It's basically here's a clown. He's dead. Here's two clowns. They're dead, let's bring out two more. None of them develop anything memorable or frightening, in any way. That is, until we get to our final villain, but more on him later.
The movie sets itself up to be a violent spectacle in gore. Zombie loves to spread the red stuff and I fully expected that here, but the movie is so short on real gore as to be disappointing. I'm not some sicko who wants blood and brains everywhere, but I do have some expectations. Basically, prepare yourself for stabbings, stabbings and more stabbings. That's about all you'll get here. It's a crazed maze full of psychotic villains who just want to stab people.
The worst part may be the directing, itself. I am not one of the legion who hated Zombie's style in his early films. It was manic. It was very MTV. Those things worked so well in the context of those movies, though. I thought the inter-spliced scenes and vintage film styling added a lot to the movies. Here, though, it's almost as if Zombie gets exposed without the budget to play with in this movie. Once he can't go nuts with the effects and the movie relies on his actual skill as a film maker, it falls apart. Freeze frame, wipe shot with snapshot of heroes, freeze frame, back to action. Repeat that throughout the movie. At a certain point, I found myself wondering if I really enjoyed his earlier movies as much as I thought because this is so bad it can't be the same guy.
The one positive is Doom Head. It's probably the same things most viewers would say. However, the fact is that there's nothing about his villain that is any different from thousands of other horror villains before him. He's a psycho. He's violent. He's got a chillingly cold apathy towards the destruction that he's inflicting on his victims. He's "not a clown" as the beginning is very clear to tell us. The fact is that people latch on to him because the rest of the movie is so bad that he becomes a breath of fresh air, but he's so far from the level of Otis or Captain Spaulding as far as great horror villains go. He's just the best thing in a bad movie.
So, I guess my opinion of Zombie is 2 great movies, 2 bad movies and one in the middle. Let's hope his next one tips the scales in a good way instead of bad.
I'm honestly struggling to come up with much positive to say but boy do I have a list of negatives. Let's start with his wife. She is the worst thing about most of his movies. While she fit her character as Baby and was pretty enough to tolerate, she was a big reason the HALLOWEEN sequel sucks. She is the main reason that LORDS OF SALEM is not better than it could have been, because of her lack of acting skills, then we get to this. I could have predicted, within the first 15 minutes, that she was our "final girl" that was going to survive all of this. I could have predicated that she would be the one to become a bada** for no reasonable explanation, other than the director's obsession with his wife. The girl can't act. In fact, she borders on being annoying and her voice is like nails on a chalkboard at times. Hire another actress for crying out loud, Rob, who might be able to make the audience have a little empathy for the character.
Now, let's get to the plot. The second that EG Daily shows up at the gas station, any idiot knows that she is the "scout" and things are about to go wrong. From there, Rob starts stealing material from every movie known to man and even stealing his own material repeatedly, starting with a scene in the middle of the road that is basically Otis on the cross stopping the tourists in HOUSE all over again. Our heroes wake up in a strange place to realize that they are now in THE RUNNING MAN, only King's story and the Arnold movie version are at least fun and let the audience have a some excitement with their violence. This movie just starts repeating itself over and over.
Rob must really like greasepaint. The clown look fit Captain Spaulding well in his first movies, but now we have a cast full of evil clown villains because, hey, that's not about the most overdone cliché in horror now, is it? The characters are barely unique from each other. It's basically here's a clown. He's dead. Here's two clowns. They're dead, let's bring out two more. None of them develop anything memorable or frightening, in any way. That is, until we get to our final villain, but more on him later.
The movie sets itself up to be a violent spectacle in gore. Zombie loves to spread the red stuff and I fully expected that here, but the movie is so short on real gore as to be disappointing. I'm not some sicko who wants blood and brains everywhere, but I do have some expectations. Basically, prepare yourself for stabbings, stabbings and more stabbings. That's about all you'll get here. It's a crazed maze full of psychotic villains who just want to stab people.
The worst part may be the directing, itself. I am not one of the legion who hated Zombie's style in his early films. It was manic. It was very MTV. Those things worked so well in the context of those movies, though. I thought the inter-spliced scenes and vintage film styling added a lot to the movies. Here, though, it's almost as if Zombie gets exposed without the budget to play with in this movie. Once he can't go nuts with the effects and the movie relies on his actual skill as a film maker, it falls apart. Freeze frame, wipe shot with snapshot of heroes, freeze frame, back to action. Repeat that throughout the movie. At a certain point, I found myself wondering if I really enjoyed his earlier movies as much as I thought because this is so bad it can't be the same guy.
The one positive is Doom Head. It's probably the same things most viewers would say. However, the fact is that there's nothing about his villain that is any different from thousands of other horror villains before him. He's a psycho. He's violent. He's got a chillingly cold apathy towards the destruction that he's inflicting on his victims. He's "not a clown" as the beginning is very clear to tell us. The fact is that people latch on to him because the rest of the movie is so bad that he becomes a breath of fresh air, but he's so far from the level of Otis or Captain Spaulding as far as great horror villains go. He's just the best thing in a bad movie.
So, I guess my opinion of Zombie is 2 great movies, 2 bad movies and one in the middle. Let's hope his next one tips the scales in a good way instead of bad.