Rob Zombie is a frustrating film maker. He is a man of many good ideas. He is capable of some directorial flashes of ability and occasional flair. He has stories he wants to tell. Yet his live action films are all so half-baked and so horribly executed to the ultimate extent of being uniformly and unsatisfyingly bad.
HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CORPSES, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and his two HALLOWEEN refries are massively less than the sum of their parts. Zombie's concepts, his vision and his creative objectives are all fine and dandy in essence - yet following gestation they hit the screen as stillborn components, constituting badly realised, dreary, boring, tasteless, lumbering, corpulent entities of ramshackle celluloid grunge. Undynamic, uneven and repugnant, uninspiring to watch and altogether tedious to a fault. Nothing he does has any of the essential components of a good horror film - they are not creepy or scary, they are only shocking by way of how amazingly painfully contrived they are and there is nothing suspenseful or thrilling to be had out of any of them.
THE LORDS OF SALEM is a missed opportunity. Zombie was given full creative control, apparently, so I was expecting this to be the moment when he honed his ideas, clarified his vision and fulfilled his promise. Pre-release spin advising of the influence of Argento and the giallo movies built-up expectations - along with the Salem setting and accompanying witchcraft theme.
The plot has a lot going for it - recovering junkie DJ receives a vinyl record in a wooden sleeve with a music track by a band billing themselves as The Lords. The music when broadcast over the airwaves has a strange effect on some who hear it and the DJ chick starts to hallucinate some pretty disturbing visions. Add to the mix three malevolent sisters, a proposed free concert by The Lords and the participation of a cast which includes Meg (THEY LIVE) Foster, Judy (INSEMINOID) Geeson, Ken (DAWN OF THE DEAD) Foree, Bruce (WILLARD) Davison, Dee (THE HOWLING) Wallace and other genre stalwarts. There is a great deal here to pique interest and more than enough to cause me to want to watch.
Yet, it dies a death on screen. It is muddled, confused, plodding, lifeless and devoid of anything to stimulate any emotion other than mostly apathy. There is some beautiful and, dare I say, arty cinematography at times, indicative of Zombie striving to achieve some greater cinematic goal. But it all feels so flat and mundane. Most of the cast give it their best shot but they seem not to have been given a whole lot of direction resulting in their performances seeming quite perfunctory and superficial. Most unfortunately Sheri Moon Zombie lives up to her marital surname and acts like one. She looks quite cute in her spectacles and dreadlocks and she does have a very nice naked posterior - so much so that if they gave Oscars for best ass performance in a leading role hers would most likely win with little contest. It's not enough. I didn't care what happened to her or feel emotionally invested in her situation whatsoever. Mr Zombie either needs to direct her better or she needs to get some acting lessons - or he needs to get another leading lady for his movies.
LORDS is more proof that Rob Zombie has a problem and that problem is in two parts. One is that of coherence and emotional technique as a director - he is severely lacking in both. Two is a resolute failure of effective conceptual realisation. He's seen Hitchcock, Carpenter, Argento, Hooper, Polanski and Romero and he knows the act well enough. He just hasn't figured out how to pull it off yet.
All that apart, LORDS does represent progress in that it is Rob Zombies best cinema film to date. It's still bad, though.
HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CORPSES, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and his two HALLOWEEN refries are massively less than the sum of their parts. Zombie's concepts, his vision and his creative objectives are all fine and dandy in essence - yet following gestation they hit the screen as stillborn components, constituting badly realised, dreary, boring, tasteless, lumbering, corpulent entities of ramshackle celluloid grunge. Undynamic, uneven and repugnant, uninspiring to watch and altogether tedious to a fault. Nothing he does has any of the essential components of a good horror film - they are not creepy or scary, they are only shocking by way of how amazingly painfully contrived they are and there is nothing suspenseful or thrilling to be had out of any of them.
THE LORDS OF SALEM is a missed opportunity. Zombie was given full creative control, apparently, so I was expecting this to be the moment when he honed his ideas, clarified his vision and fulfilled his promise. Pre-release spin advising of the influence of Argento and the giallo movies built-up expectations - along with the Salem setting and accompanying witchcraft theme.
The plot has a lot going for it - recovering junkie DJ receives a vinyl record in a wooden sleeve with a music track by a band billing themselves as The Lords. The music when broadcast over the airwaves has a strange effect on some who hear it and the DJ chick starts to hallucinate some pretty disturbing visions. Add to the mix three malevolent sisters, a proposed free concert by The Lords and the participation of a cast which includes Meg (THEY LIVE) Foster, Judy (INSEMINOID) Geeson, Ken (DAWN OF THE DEAD) Foree, Bruce (WILLARD) Davison, Dee (THE HOWLING) Wallace and other genre stalwarts. There is a great deal here to pique interest and more than enough to cause me to want to watch.
Yet, it dies a death on screen. It is muddled, confused, plodding, lifeless and devoid of anything to stimulate any emotion other than mostly apathy. There is some beautiful and, dare I say, arty cinematography at times, indicative of Zombie striving to achieve some greater cinematic goal. But it all feels so flat and mundane. Most of the cast give it their best shot but they seem not to have been given a whole lot of direction resulting in their performances seeming quite perfunctory and superficial. Most unfortunately Sheri Moon Zombie lives up to her marital surname and acts like one. She looks quite cute in her spectacles and dreadlocks and she does have a very nice naked posterior - so much so that if they gave Oscars for best ass performance in a leading role hers would most likely win with little contest. It's not enough. I didn't care what happened to her or feel emotionally invested in her situation whatsoever. Mr Zombie either needs to direct her better or she needs to get some acting lessons - or he needs to get another leading lady for his movies.
LORDS is more proof that Rob Zombie has a problem and that problem is in two parts. One is that of coherence and emotional technique as a director - he is severely lacking in both. Two is a resolute failure of effective conceptual realisation. He's seen Hitchcock, Carpenter, Argento, Hooper, Polanski and Romero and he knows the act well enough. He just hasn't figured out how to pull it off yet.
All that apart, LORDS does represent progress in that it is Rob Zombies best cinema film to date. It's still bad, though.