Someone should really tell Rob Zombie
that there are easier ways to see his wife chained up than making a
movie about evil clowns.
That said, however, it’s good to
see Zombie back on his game. While the Halloween films
weren’t horrible in my opinion, Lords of Salem was an utter
bore. What Zombie does best is sleaze, and now the king of modern
exploitation has returned.
This movie isn’t as good as The
Devil’s Rejects, but that lightning will only strike once. You
can’t expect Zombie to change the game every time he plays.
Furthermore, this film did give us one of the best horror villains in
quite some time with Doom-Head. He’s a truly fascinating mixture
of the intellectual and the savage in a way that I’ve never really
seen, and definitely set apart from Zombie’s past villains.
The premise of this movie is that a
group of Carnies in the 1970s are kidnapped on Halloween by rich
people who pay evil clowns to hunt victims for sport. These rich
people are led by Malcolm McDowell in a role that could very easily
be an older version of Alex from A Clockwork Orange (ignoring
the final chapter of the book, obviously). It’s one thing to
portray and evil sadist taking great pleasure in the pain of others.
McDowell is a man who sees the pain of others as a routine part of
his life, and if anything seems almost bored by the game he runs. I
don’t think we ever see an emotion from him stronger than
annoyance. I imagine a life of breaking people through public
service would have turned Alex into exactly this man.
The movie gets one thing absolutely
right: every character, good or evil, has a distinct personality.
Sometimes you love to watch them die, sometimes you hate it.
However, every death, not matter how gruesome, has an impact on you.
That’s exactly the reaction you need from your audience to set a
great horror film apart from a good one.
Aside from the premise of “fighting
evil clowns” there isn’t a lot to the plot until the end, and
there’s only so much I can say about that without spoilers. I have
mixed feelings about the ending. Zombie combines a major cliché
subversion with another major cliché. In this case, however, I’m
not totally sure either of these were really earned, but explaining
why would be spoilerific. Perhaps another day. This is certainly a
film I’d like to do a regular review on at some point.
That said, I recommend this movie.
It’s a lot of fun, and if you like Rob Zombie you’re going to get
exactly what you expect.
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