9: The Devil's Rejects

I wouldn't go so far as to call Rob Zombie's first film, House of 1000 Corpses, good, but it was quite entertaining. A family of serial killer's having fun doing what they do best. The entire film looked like an album cover with it's use of intense colors and imagery. It was a popcorn flick, something to stick in the middle of a horror marathon to lighten the mood a bit. I was surprised to learn it had a sequel, and even more surprised by what the sequel ended up being.

The Devil's Rejects takes the family from House and throws them harshly into the real world. The opening scene really says it all: a massive police renders almost half of the family dead or captured in the first ten minutes of the film. After the rest of them escape, the police search the house. They discover cages filled with people, bodies in varying stages of dismemberment pretty much in every room. The film cuts to a news station covering as bodies begin being pulled out of a mass grave. The opening makes one thing abundantly clear: this film was going to have a completely different tone from the first.

The thing that makes this film stand out is how tight the focus is on the villains. The film follows the rest of the family and never tries to make excuses for them. They don't just steal a car because they are desperate to get away they gleefully murder the car's owner first. They need a room to stay in for a while until they can escape, so they talk their way into the first room they can and immediately start tormenting the people there in any way they can. These aren't desperate criminals struggling to survive, they are sadistic killers who don't care if they get caught. They're like a Manson family Bonnie and Clyde.

But by the end of the film, you are rooting for them. The supposed good guys are just as bad, just as sadistic. He wants to give the family their just desserts. And you can't stand him. You love baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig). You even grow a soft spot for the way Otis (Bill Mosely) bickers with the rest of them. They are a close family that you don't want to see torn apart, even after they start skinning peoples' faces off to make face-masks. Seriously, it is hard to describe just how messed up these guys actually are. It is hard to make you genuinely care about likable character's, and this film has you feeling afraid for a family that calls themselves the Devil's Rejects.

Technically, the film holds up well. Rob Zombie shows a mastery of using the soundtrack to show theme and setting. He seems to understand the mechanics of horror film; he knows the reasoning behind convention and he knows when to break it (and, almost more importantly, when not to).

The film ends in basically the only way it could have, but it is somehow completely alien. The events that happen are basically the events you would expect after the film's opening, but the way you feel about it has completely changed. It is us, the audience, who changed from the events in the film, rather than the character's themselves.