The Devil's Rejects

--Reviewed by Lindy Loo

Plotline: The police track down the Firefly family at their residence and decide to take vigilante justice against them for the 1,000+ (*fart*) murders that they've committed over the years. Three of them manage to escape and go on a cross-country rampage as they attempt to outrun the sheriff, leaving more dead bodies in their wake--imagine that.

Scariness factor: Gah. I really hate to say it because I know Rob Zombie's supposed to be a big ol' horror movie nerd and stuff, but I'll be damned if his movies aren't scary at all. They're not even really DISTURBING because the characters are so ridiculous and the deaths are so ridiculous that it's hard to really be DISTURBED by them. Especially his hot, hot wife who is just irritating as a murderer. He may LIKE horror movies, but a scary horror movie he has yet to make. Gory ones, yes. Foul-mouthed, titty-bumping ones, yes. But scary ones, hell no.

Originality: Wow--a group of murderers taking the lives of folks in a gritty, back-woods kinda way. Has THAT been done before? Nah. *COUTexasChainsawMassacreGH*

Complaints: The lack of scariness in this movie was yet again disappointing. Zombie seems to favor vulgarity, swearing, and titties over any substantial scariness. This was particularly disappointing seeing as the previews made it seem like it was very old-school and gritty, like a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something. But instead it was mostly just tiresome and overdone. Nothing was surprising about it. As in House of 1,000 Corpses (which I must pause and comment on--1,000 corpses?? Really? I mean, wouldn't that be KINDA hard to tackle without SOMEONE catching on quickly, especially when you live in a backwoods fricking area where there aren't a whole heckuva lot of possible other culprits around??), the gore and violence is so over the top that it somehow becomes ho-hum. And the characters are never really threatening--in House of 1,000 Corpses there were moments were I got a bit nervous and tense, but in The Devil's Rejects I can't remember this happening once. Zombie seems to have good intentions, and he seems to catch a moment or two of actual gritty good-horror-movie bliss, but they are way too few and far between.

High Points: I definitely liked this movie a lot better than its predecessor. It was much more believable, and it made a lot more logical sense. It also doesn't seem like it was a gratuitous gross-out fest of bloody images with a plot loosely stringing it together--still violent, but it at least had some sort of driving force to it. And I definitely liked the sequence that's put together over the opening credits--Zombie takes an overplayed and cheerier '70's Allman Bros. radio song and fuses it with really disparate and bloody images in a quite cool kinda way. This was the part I most liked about the movie. Actually, he takes some really good songs and fuses them with really bizarre events/images throughout the whole movie in a way that I found fun most of the time (though a bit annoying once or twice). I enjoyed this most. That and it was fun trying to pick up on his little nods to other movies (horror and both) including such stuff as Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which was actually a bizarrely funny but disturbing moment in the movie) and Thelma and Louise among others.

Overall: Again, kinda like with The Village, I just feel ho-hum about this movie. I was disappointed with it since it wasn't as gritty and cool as the previews made it look. But it's not terrible, nor is it fantastic. It just deserves a big EH and a couple proddings to Rob Zombie to keep working his ass off so that he finally MAKES something scary.

Grade: C