Directed by: Rob Zombie
Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, and Bruce Davidson
Plot: A rock DJ gets caught up in a ritual to resurrect a coven of witches.
Review:
Worlds colliding! Rock music and horror movies. His whole career has been marked by one bleeding into the other at some point. It’s Rob Zombie’s bread and butter, especially when Rob Zombie gets to riff on the old adage, “the devil’s music.”
Heidi (played by Zombie’s wifey Sheri Moon) is a local DJ with a history of drug abuse. One day, she gets a package in the mail. It is a record from a band called “The Lords of Salem.” It plays some creepy repetitive tune (if you can call it that) that makes Heidi and a few of the other local women feel a little loopy. This record starts a series of weird incidents. Heidi starts having nightmares and stalked by a strange presence, a presence only we can see apparently. It is creepy and atmospheric and reminds me of the movie, The Sentinel. Heidi starts getting drug cravings again because of the visions, and it hurts things with her friends, especially Whitey (played by Jeff Daniel Phillips). It is unclear how romantic Phillips and Sheri are, but they have really great chemistry, the kind that blurs the line of romance and friendship that they could have gone either way. They also give some pretty natural and depressed performances. Checking out other reviews though, it seems I am the only one who thought so.
Also part of the cast is Bruce Davidson. He plays a local historian who starts off as a guest on Heidi’s radio show. He pretty much runs around the whole time doing research on the Salem, MA witch mythology, which comes with weird visuals and dense exposition. Davidson does a damn good job of making it entertaining and less like info dumping.
Zombie had me by the collar for so much of the movie. It was steady and atmospheric with a collection of disturbing and graphic imagery to shock you every once in awhile. It is exactly what you want from a horror movie. As the movie progresses though, the balance gets thrown off. The movie becomes much more surreal and abstract, especially in its closing minutes. It seems more like a music video than the climax to such an understated supernatural thriller.
Zombie says this is his last horror movie, at least for now, and that is probably a good thing. He shows a lot of potential as a filmmaker, but for some reason he seems to be having trouble with this particular genre. The Devil’s Rejects was an instant classic as far as I am concerned, but everything else has been either too bland to make waves or so experimental that it falls apart. Nevertheless, I still look forward to what Zombie can do.
Rating: 7/10
What Else to Watch: The Sentinel, not the Michael Douglas thriller but the horror movie about an aspiring model who takes an apartment that turns out to be built over the door to Hell.
