[The ending] resembles what the conclusion of 2001 would have looked like if it had been directed by Satan himself. All hail this magnificent madness.
This is getting a release on approximately 300 screens on Friday. To paraphrase Zombie: "It won't be playing everywhere you go, but it's essentially a wide release insofar as if you look for it near you, you'll find it somewhere."
Zombie has been hit-or-miss so far in his career, but the hits (in my opinion: The Devil's Rejects and Halloween II) have been excellent examples of horror films that are veering more and more into Lynch/Argento territory with each effort. However, he has stated that this may be his last horror film, with Broad Street Bullies coming next.
This film was a toothsome, fantastic mess, a story about lonesomeness and addiction that has been splattered with blood and organs and chants, and somehow, in all of Zombie's bizarre distortion, remains completely coherent and true to its aims. The David Lynch comparisons are apt - just as Lynch is able to present nauseatingly inexplicable abstractions that don't derail his narratives, Zombie throws every strange impulse he has at the screen, building to a third act that completely takes us on a roller coaster away from anything resembling reality. When the coda plays during the end credits, the viewer is thrust back into the real world, wondering what, if anything, was genuine about what they've seen. Heidi is a character who is struggling with something larger than herself: and whether that's a supernatural, Velvet Underground-soaked music video-style orgy of death, or just a self-destructive past that she can't shake off, I'm glad to have been in the audience to witness her descent. I won't soon forget that goddamned satanic fetus set to wretched strings with the volume turned up to 11, and I pray that it isn't waiting for me at the side of my bed in the morning.
Suffice it to say, this is a strange, strange film. Rosemary's Baby by way of a bad LSD trip, the kind that'd convince anyone never to touch the stuff again. You should see The Lords of Salem, but I wouldn't be so foolish as to recommend it to you.
I thought it was laughably sloppy, predictable and derivative (Rosemary's mostly, but some Shining-via-Innkeepers ( :eyeroll: ) and Exorcist-ish gynophobia) and that tableaux was pretentious and meaningless after all the terribly lopsided and resolution-less (in a clueless writing sense, not withholding suspense sense) dream-sequences. Also he can't compose a frame very well: there were several supposed-jumpscare moments (CUE THE SCARY MUSIC STAB!!!) where it took me a second to find the grody ghostbody in the frame
I wish we could give his career to the least talented member of Gwar and get some good movies after these last 5 or 6 bores.
touché! my wife and i go to the movies pretty much every night and see everything eventually, so i'm always starved for new ones and i liked this trailer more than Oblivion or To the Wonder so it got priority (and i loved his Grindhouse trailer, he's great at trailers!) - we actually had tickets for the midnight showing on Thursday but I had a panic attack over a power failure and plumbing problem, so we stayed in and double-featured it last night with Oblivion (which is equally derivative but slick and satisfying for the most part)
I did like the music and abrasive sound design and can see most Halloween II fans loving this one, especially the finale
but mfunk, didn't it bother you like how the signs on the foreheads and some other touches were so sloppy when he had them in these Kubrick/Jodorowsky dynamic symmetry frames/compositions which needed more care for the details?
Although I'm in kind of an odd place with The Lords of Salem, I'm in wigwam's camp in terms of its merits as a piece of art. Within the mess of this movie is an intriguing and unsettling horror story and I really wish that Zombie had stuck with it, developed it more and seen it through, rather than indulge himself in a protracted, unoriginal pastiche of all his favorite horror movies. There's something almost embarrassing about his constant and unsubtle referencing, especially in the final act. Zombie's personal style isn't strong enough to deftly synthesize the quotations into the film, so they just sort of hang there, blunt reminders of the better films and directors from which he's taking. Also, I lost count of how many times I cringed at the script. The scene where two men are discussing the diary of a pivotal Colonial-era figure could've been lifted right out of Birdemic-type fare.
I did enjoy Sheri Moon Zombie's performance and her considerable charisma, and I got the strong sense that Rob Zombie was thrilled to be focusing in on her entirely this time. Which makes me look back on the film with some amount of weird benevolence because I find it almost uh, endearing how much Zombie cares for his wife and his various horror influences and favorite songs.
Boring, confusing nonsense with embarrassing amounts of ripping-off Kubrick films (the glowing white furniture from Clockwork Orange, the Shining hallways, etc.) in a vain attempt to give a poorly written, frankly pretty stupid film some kind of artistic merit that it doesn't deserve. Sherri Zombie can't act her way out of a wet paper bag and Rob can't even remember what the focus of any given scene is, which is why important stuff like the ghosts gets lost way off in the corner, barely noticeable, while the camera roams aimlessly. Plot doesn't exist because Zombie wastes too much time throwing pseudo-surrealist crap at the screen because he thinks its cool and apparently doesn't mind wasting money. The special effects are awful, too, especially the fetus thing, which looks like a reject from The Boxer's Omen (but that's a much better film). I spent most of the film waiting for something to actually happen, and then I got what I deserved with that supremely stupid third act. Zombie doesn't make movies, he justs films his own id and calls it art. It's garbage.
I'm in the middle on this. There are moments that I really liked (seeing this in close succession with Only God Forgives was a bizarre experience, as it is another 'corridor film' with hallways lined with interestingly patterned wallpaper!) and a lot that fell really flat.
As LQ said above, I also liked more of a focus on the character Sheri Moon Zombie was playing this time around, although I was simultaneously disappointed at the way they took such a beautiful woman and grunged her up for most of the movie and put her in a semi-conscious, passive state throughout the final two thirds or so of the film (Rosemary's Baby-esque - the whole film is like a drugged out Hippie era version of that film, except with occasional references to having to go to new-fangled modern era drug rehab sessions). So I still don't really think it did her justice.
I did particularly like the playing of the older actors. OK, so it is Rob Zombie genuflecting before favoured horror-movie actors of previous eras, but it was still very nice to see Maria Conchita Alonso (probably best known for roles in The Running Man and Predator 2), Ken Foree, Meg Foster or our main trio of dotty witch midwives Dee Wallace, Judy Geeson (Inseminoid!) and Patricia Quinn (Magenta from The Rocky Horror Picture Show!). As with Tarantino, while I might vary on how much I like Mr Zombie's films, I do have to respect the tasteful casting! While the film strangely lets down the younger actors in the main roles, I think the main reason to return to this film would definitely have to be down to the scenes with Bruce Davison and with the three sister landlords, with of course the best scene of the film being the one where they meet!
I'm not sure about the rest of the film though. The radio station scenes felt a bit embarrassingly aimless (thus wasting Ken Foree). I loved the 'inexorable pull from Room 5' idea, both the first exploration and the scene where the room leads into the enormous theatre for the impregnation scene, the Exorcist-style autumn location shooting, and the flashbacks to the witchburning past were neat.
On the other hand the titles and 'photoshop-melting' effects in the final sequence were a little cheap-looking, I amused myself by hoping that the Devil puppet was another nod to Judy Geeson's role in Inseminoid, and the gibberish witch-chatter was more hilarious than scary, though the actors all commit themselves to it with gusto, particularly Meg Foster! (The scene where the three landladies wheel Heidi down the corridor past all the other rooms, stop outside room 5 and then loudly praise Satan just made me wish that the other rooms had been occupied just so that halfway through the scene someone could open one of the other doors in the corridor dressed in their nightgown and ask if they could keep the racket down as they were trying to sleep!)
And as not a particularly religious person, I found a lot of the 'shocking' Satanic rituals, devil-Priests wanting oral sex, naked dancing and general naughty comments about Jesus quite charming in their straight-faced seeming attempts to be edgy and offensive. Ken Russell did a lot of this stuff better, and once we get to images such as Heidi riding a goat like a bucking bronco in a public toilet during the final sequence, I could safely say that I wasn't particularly frightened by what I was seeing (the goat admirably seems to be rather non-plussed about what is going on around it during all of its scenes!)
But I do love the ideas in the film about fate and powerlessness to change the course of events and the sense of a night-shift lifestyle of permanent darkness. And that final image of Heidi, now become a new Satanic Saint haloed like an anti-Virgin Mary atop a pile of sacrificed naked women, the rest of the Salem women of her generation, backed by The Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties! That was a satisfying, fully earned image in a film where mostly unearned shocking images are just thrown around.
(NOTE: I originally wrote this in 2013, upon its theatrical release.)
While he owns a flavor that is almost always tonally consistent and distinctive with a trademark aura, Rob Zombie can really be read as an artist incredibly potent with material that he has drawn more from inspiration rather than invention. While some of his detractors use such a defense for their negative viewpoint on the director (and, to be fair, those are viewpoints easily understandable), there is a way that Zombie both visually and aurally creates a language within his films that makes him, like such masters of the genre like Brian De Palma and Dario Argento, a heavily influenced and tightly adjusted craftsman of old-fashioned horror elements. One not completely fascinated by doing anything fresh by design, but recycling in a way as to make the viewer completely change the way they thought of certain familiar conventions.
The first time I realized that Zombie was more than just the "white trash hack" he so often gets labeled was when I watched his sophomore effort The Devil's Rejects. I had already seen his remake of Halloween and was greatly disgusted by it; completely repulsed by how he handled such iconography without any restraint or apathy for the franchise's familiar clockwork. It wasn't that it was remaking a fantastic film, but there was also this use of obnoxious dialogue that stunk of trailer park swagger that was both grating and disgusting. It was an element that gave a pretty straightforward slasher reconstruction a bad taste that could displease those who weren't even devoted fans of the original movie. This same aesthetic in dialogue was also present in The Devil's Rejects - only more excessive. And yet, I finished the movie completely moved. A neo-western horror movie with strong exploitation influence somehow, by the use of a duality in the screenplay and the brilliant composition of both image and sound, managed to make me rethink the classic western fables of 'good vs. evil' and made me become emotionally-attached to three vicious serial killers. And yet, I didn't want to applaud neither the film nor Zombie's direction. It was a severely devastating film - both brutal and unapologetic - and I wasn't sure if the director intended such analyses within his shameless trash, or if I was just piecing together such a response within my own head.
But then came around a first-time viewing of House of 1,000 Corpses, his directorial debut. Critically-panned, the plot outline for the film quite immediately confirms that Zombie wasn't going to be bringing any new thematic material to the table. With a simple, slasher-lite premise for its framework, the movie is dominated mostly by extended murder setpieces and mishappenings - mainly just Zombie showcasing a supreme knack for framing an unforgettable image and an unconventional way of editing his films. I didn't really love the film because, while I was picking up on Zombie's directorial quirks, there wasn't really much to take from it - even on the basis of traditional slasher responses. It just wasn't a fun slasher movie; wallowing in the fact that it was purely making voyeuristic glances at fantastical violence for masturbatory pleasure rather than really opening doors for the harmless norm. There was no chance for survival as characters in Zombie's world because, to be frank, he wanted to watch them demolish on the screen. In a nutshell, my reaction to Zombie and his work was that he was an accomplished cinephile with great knowledge about the art of the horror genre - but he was a despicable humanist and never once showed a single care for characters outside of the antagonists. Such care and adoration for evil was something uncomfortably present while watching the group of films he had so far spewed out into the world.
Finally, in 2009, Zombie returned to the story of Michael Myers with his Halloween II. While many assumed, and weirdly still do following the actual viewing of the film, that it was a remake of the classic film's 1981 sequel, Zombie actually continued from his remake with his own fresh spin on the continuation. Suffice to say, even while being completely depressed by everything I had seen prior, I didn't prepare myself for the kind of pain Halloween II would throw onto my shoulders. The way Zombie made use of his frame (yet again), his unconventional editing (yet again) and his composure of music alongside his imagery (yet again) made me, yet again, floored by his mechanical taste. And once again, I was absolutely mortified by how the movie made me feel. No matter how much of an accomplishment it was on both a technical and impacting level (to this day, I have yet to see a slasher sequel as original and perversely bold as this come from a mainstream American studio), I just could not get over how the female lead character is sent through such hell. I vowed to myself that I was never going to sit through the brutality of the film again and was quite vocal with my distaste for the movie as a whole. However, due to my little brother's insistence on wanting to see the film, I happened to actually give the film another go - this time, the director's cut.
This version of the film featured an entirely different final scene not only much more damaging on an emotional tier, but overtly changed my perspective on the entire goal Zombie had in mind with his cinematic design. The man is dark, disturbing and on the evil side of the line, but human. Halloween II opened my eyes to how truly emotional he was as a visual storyteller, forcing me to rewatch his entire ouvere (not a happy week, to say the least) and made me come to realize that, while he's very excessive and influenced as a filmmaker, there was too much consistency in his approach on a directorial level to write him off as a cynical hack. For chrissake, I don't think a cynical hack would have ever had both the balls and the brains to make Halloween II as viciously aware as it is concerning the repercussions of death. I was now sure that I had found an auteur that was misunderstood (understandably, since I wasn't such a fan previously) and in strong need of some defense.
So now here we sit in 2013 with Rob Zombie's latest motion picture sitting strictly in a limited theatrical release and, having developed into the appreciative supporter of Zombie that I have become, the plot for The Lords of Salem came off as something insanely silly. Almost like a lowbrow, forgettable episode of The Twilight Zone or, sheesh, even Goosebumps. And, for reasons currently unclear to even myself, I guess this caused me to once again go into a Rob Zombie film without any preparation for something that would put me into a state of misery. The movie had sequences and events that were beyond silly - both predictable and somewhat schmaltzy - and it pained me to watch such a likable female protagonist go through so much pain and terror without any inch of fight in her soul. Basically, I was experiencing yet another of Zombie's protagonists burning within his frame while he stands by the evil (in this case, the spawn of Satan instead of another psycho serial killer) with a gleeful, demonic smile. That she suffers so much at the hands of imagery perversely disrespectful to actual Satanic symbolism only made me more furious at the director. Even while I had similar negative reactions to his work before, at least the visual palette he embraced for his previous features had the decency of being comprehensible. The multiple dream sequences and nightmares throughout Lords of Salem really made me roll my eyes constantly because they felt so forced and lacking any sort of reason to take place within context of the story. I had to question the goat-walking sequence, the reason for Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon being the decor base for the main character's bedroom other than to be referential, or what was the point of certain demons looking like metal rockstars or a Thanksgiving turkey? Most definitely, why does Satan's son look like a raging squid? The tragic downfall of Heidi Hawthorne deserved to be surrounded by imagery that didn't seem thought up on the dime.
But a rewatch (yet a-fucking-gain) opened my eyes. Sequences that formerly felt like unnecessary and/or cliché uses of horror principles now came off as hauntingly vague (for example, having known the outcome of the events within the story, I now found myself wondering who or what the shadow figure in the door during the opening scene was) and I also caught onto Zombie's use of the Heidi character arc. These visual pieces peppered throughout the film aren't supposed to be taken at a literal level of the story, but on an animated level that puts an otherwise realistic horror tale into this varied presentation of horror genre aspects. I realized that the demon walking the goat was a dual presentation of Heidi walking her dog just seconds prior - visually representing why the character doesn't garner the nerve to fight back: she's become a literal demon to herself. I also pieced together that the very reason for Méliès imagery being there was to help Zombie feed further into what his intentions are with The Lords of Salem as a whole. It's a truly cinematic movie - one barricaded purely in visual design to such a degree that the attention to authentic dialogue and narrative structure has basically become obsolete. Zombie has purely made his first film that completely relies on his stamp - from his painterly framing and his obsession with the history of film (specifically horror) to his instinctual flow of music alongside his brush strokes. Within Zombie's visual viewpoint of Heidi's internal hell, it makes sense for her drug-induced state-of-mind to visualize what she does - a formation of Satanic imagery both unintelligible and knowing. The silly look of a metal rockstar tonguing viciously on Heidi's skin feels rightfully meshed with the Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ken Russell allusions and A Trip to the Moon's own iconic all-seeing eye pun; and the Thanksgiving turkey now seems like an aborted formation alongside the flapping squid creature. Ending everything on the starstruck image of Heidi standing upon a body of dead women with her still flat (but thoroughly pregnant) stomach is rightfully disturbing and memorable; the shot obviously forming the conclusion that the actual son of Lucifer had been created. The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" playing with the visual cue hints at Zombie's way of pleasuring the LSD-like nature of the final ten minutes the film flashes on the screen; recalling the former scenes (and all moments of shock horror before that) as concrete representations of character conflict; a kind of approach to development that he used it in smaller doses within Halloween II's own realm of character issues (by showcasingwhy Michael feels the need to hunger for his sister).
Zombie utilizes material again and again; the art direction of Lords of Salem is reminiscent of both Roman Polanski and Stanley Kubrick and the peculiar attention for literal composition above the screenplay (as well as the use of a subplot involving the investigative writer archetype) feel spiritually in-tune with Dario Argento. But yet, Zombie once again has made a film that completely lives up to what his work within the horror genre has always been consistent with: a unique language that is formed via cues from the cutting of both sound and image; bringing the past influences and twisting them into a new fruition - all for the sake of telling the tragic fate of someone good. In this singular case for Zombie, however, now with what he says may be his final horror effort, his recent film focuses more on the ever-going birth of evil rather than the sympathetic resolutions of it. To quote the previously mentioned Velvet Underground song that scores the finale: 'what costume shall the poor girl wear to all tomorrow's parties?' In Zombie's viewpoint of the world, everyone's wearing a costume (Heidi overwhelming with her dress attire) - and denying the truest of horrors within all humans: evil - some repress it, some shift it to their own moral standings, and then others just let it loose like the animals they are. With Heidi in Lords of Salem, the case seems to be clear that some of us just feel powerless within this vicious world. That she comes off as Zombie's most likable character in his entire catalog certainly feels insanely correct. Nothing's more terrifying than the demons after you being parts of yourself.
The first two thirds of this were the first Rob Zombie film I liked, then the wheels come off. But at least for once he displays something like empathy for his characters and he keeps his adolescent Charles Manson fixation in check.
touché! my wife and i go to the movies pretty much every night and see everything eventually, so i'm always starved for new ones and i liked this trailer more than Oblivion or To the Wonder so it got priority (and i loved his Grindhouse trailer, he's great at trailers!) - we actually had tickets for the midnight showing on Thursday but I had a panic attack over a power failure and plumbing problem, so we stayed in and double-featured it last night with Oblivion (which is equally derivative but slick and satisfying for the most part)
