The Devil's Rejects

Rob Zombie is angry. He’s not angry to the point that he’d actually kill someone, of course, with the exception of a couple hundred movie characters.

After being revolted by various scenes in his filmmaking debut House of 1000 Corpses (2003), I’m not sure I would have had any idea what to make of Zombie’s latest sophomore effort The Devil’s Rejects, had I not caught a rather enlightening interview with him on the Independent Film Channel. In person, musician-turned-writer/director Rob Zombie exuded the same grounded intelligence and calm temperament that Marilyn Manson sported in Bowling for Columbine (2002). He delved into his various frustrations with the sanitized “PG-13 crap” that passes for horror movies these days, the many obstacles an aspiring filmmaker must face in order for a true artistic vision to be realized, the unnerving amount of violence in our country, and basically the overall flaws of American society.

The lone subject of Zombie’s praise was Lion’s Gate Films, the studio that released Rejects without changing a single frame, thus making it a completely genuine cinematic work of an artist (which is rarely seen in the American mainstream these days). Yet the most important part of the interview came in its aftermath, where two former punk rockers talked about the general appeal of their music. Their theory was that punk rock mainly exists for enabling its listeners to vent – about religion, politics, adolescence, and anything else. Zombie’s music may also fit into that category of “venting art forms”, and his Devils’ Rejects film can easily be seen as the film equivalent to his music.

It’s a so-called “horror movie” that observes vile people doing reprehensible things in a cinematic style that is cruel, uncompromising, nauseating, and admittedly well-done. While Rejects harkens back to some of the grisly horror classics of the 1970’s, it doesn’t at all attempt to imitate the masterful wit of Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant Kill Bill films. And while Bill was more easily embraceable for a wider range of audience members, only hardcore horror-buffs could actually enjoy watching Rejects. One reason for this may be due to the fact that Zombie’s film doesn’t really work as a horror movie; there’s not a great deal of suspense or tension. What it really emerges as is a deeply disturbing portrait of sick, evil people.

Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon (Zombie’s wife), and Sid Haig reprise their roles from Corpses as a group of serial killers who take delight in torturing their victims, while a determined sheriff (in a ferocious performance by William Forsythe) hunts them down. That’s about it, as far as the plot goes. What is impressive about Rejects is the raw intensity of its style, which includes frenzied camerawork that rarely stays on the same angle of a given scene, and a production design that is so thoroughly ugly that audience members will be running for their showers afterward. The performances are all uniformly strong, especially from Forsythe and Haig, who plays an evil clown with teeth so bad that they just may be the scariest thing in the movie. Zombie also assembles an oddball supporting cast that includes everyone from B-movie queen Leslie Easterbrook to Elizabeth Daily (best known as the voice of Tommy Pickles on “Rugrats”), which is almost as intriguing as his downright weird song choices.

There are only momentary glimpses of jet-black humor, yet none are as funny as the scene where a film critic (bearing an odd resemblance to Gene Shalit) is brought to the police department in an effort by the sheriff to better understand the killers, since each of their names is modeled after a character played by Groucho Marx (such as Captain Spaulding). This leads to a heated debate between the critic and Forsythe, who is offended by the critic’s belittling of Elvis Presley (who is apparently worshipped in the sheriff’s part of the Southwest). The sheriff gets so ludicrously angry over the Elvis incident that you wonder if he merely forgot that there are serial killers at large (everybody loves somebody, I guess).

Yes, the violence in Rejects is extreme, yet after viewing Gaspar Noe’s horrifying and sobering Irreversible (2002), movie violence just doesn’t seem to affect me as potently anymore. What I found more unsettling was the film’s unrelenting bleakness, demonstrated in a scene where a killer tempts God to smite him before he kills another one of his victims (obviously, nothing happens to the killer). The characters seem to exist in a universe devoid of anything sacred, and thus feel compelled to create meaning in their lives by destroying others in the name of “artificial” gods. The serial killers claim they kill in the name of the devil, while the sheriff claims he kills in the name of God, and once the sheriff finally catches the killers, he takes such perverse delight in torturing them that he seems just as evil as they are.

Thus, as the film arrives at its Bonnie and Clyde-inspired finale, I realized exactly what this film’s fundamental flaw was: its story wasn’t compelling in the slightest. Sure, there’s a lot of bloodletting, but the characters lack any sort of depth that would enable the audience to care about any of the blood being let. The killers are comical caricatures who lack the human traits that would give them a Godfather-like appeal, the sheriff eventually emerges as nothing but a crazed bloodthirsty redneck, and none of the victims are given enough screen time before they’re gruesomely killed off. The Devil’s Rejects unfortunately becomes the type of Hollywood blockbuster it was allegedly a reaction against: it’s low on character development, but big on style and action – except that in this case, the stylish action is much, much gorier.

It’s an angry film, too; the kind where characters foam at the mouth, scream at each other, and are eventually driven to murder. The film’s anger is most likely a result of the filmmaker’s anger, yet if Mr. Zombie had seen this year’s film The Upside of Anger, he would have learned that rage is only positive if you channel it into something constructive. Some use anger as a fuel to motivate them to make the world a better place. Some get involved in politics if they don’t like the direction in which their country is going. Yet there will always be those people who merely use anger as an excuse to vent and swear a lot. And as a “venting art form”, The Devil’s Rejects is nothing but one long, loud, well-constructed expletive that sounds cool, but is ultimately ugly and pointless.

Rating: **1/2 (out of *****)