The Lords of Salem:
Heidi, a local rock DJ in Salem, plays a record she and her two co-DJs received from a group dubbed "The Lords", which the DJs re-dub "The Lords of Salem", assuming they're a local band. She then plays it on-air. This record as a strange effect on the women of Salem, and as strange events start happening around Heidi's home, she begins to discover that The Lords of Salem are more than just a band, they're a coven of witches from colonial days, and they're back for blood.... The cast for the film includes Rob Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie, Academy Award-nominee Bruce Davison (in a subplot story arc that was more interesting than the rest of the film), Jeff Daniel Phillips (most famous for being featured in several GEICO commercials, and Zombie's Halloween II), cult actor Ken Foree, Judy Geeson, Patricia Quinn, Dee Wallace (ET, The Hills Have Eyes, The Stepford Wives, The Howling, 10, Cujo, Critters), and Meg Foster (TV's The Scarlet Letter, Ticket to Heaven, They Live). This is an.... odd film. The movie is not as bad as Halloween II, but is nowhere near as good as The Devil's Rejects, or even House of 1000 Corpses. The movie is very upsetting. It goes way too far. I believe this is the very reason that Zombie has decided to discontinue making horror films, at least, for the mean time. You see, when a director with a very unique but dark style is given absolute free reign to do whatever they want, it doesn't always come out great. I'm not condoning censoring the artist at all, but here's a little breakdown. Zombie has always made his films independently (i.e. the way he wants to make them), but he's always had Lionsgate (a fairly large movie company, responsible for such hits as Saw, American Psycho, and The Hunger Games) backing him up, and making sure he never crosses that line of too much. Sure, he walks that fine line quite often, but rarely stumbles over it, and when he does, it's usually overshadowed by how well made his movies are. (Well, at least not his remakes, anyway.) This film was produced completely independently, it was supposed to be released last October, but it only did so in film festivals, it is only know getting a wider release. This film was picked up at the last minute by Alliance Films (another fairly large company which has produced such horror films as Insidious and Sinister, which unfortunately was bought out by a bigger company recently), who just took the film as it was. This was a big mistake. And this had happened before: flash back to 1990, Warner Bros. was very happy, as newfound director Tim Burton used his dark and unique style to produce three major hits for them: Pee-Wee's Big Adventure in 1985, Beetlejuice in 1988, and the mega-hit Batman in 1989. They decided that because Batman was such a huge hit, that Burton could do whatever he wanted with the next film. Although Batman Returns was a good film, it was an awful Batman film. Batman was placed secondary to the villains, who were grotesque and tragic characters, and the style and plot of the film was far too adult and creepy for children. it was infamous for having McDonald's pull the plug on the Happy Meals due to overwhelming complaints from parents that they took their kids to see the movie and it was far too violent and scary. It was also infamous for leaving kids in the theater crying and parents shocked and appalled. Burton and star Michael Keaton were booted off the next Batman film. Now, this is not quite the same case (this is not a beloved franchise which was advertised to children), but the imagery here is more shocking than anything we've seen from any of Zombie's previous work. The ending sequence is appalling, shocking, gross, disturbing, extremely offensive, sacrilegious, and fucked up beyond belief, and makes no sense, and the ending is total bullshit. It also feels like a Rob Zombie music video on a bad acid trip while watching fucked up horror films. The acting is sub-par for a Zombie film, and I'm not accusing Zombie of being sacrilegious, but there is some heavy emphasis of anti-religious material here. I know it was only here to make the witches seem more evil, but the witches (and even a heavy metal rock star character) constantly call religions, particularly Judeochristian religions, "evil" and call Jesus Christ "the deceiver of all mankind" and call his followers cruel names, and I believe they call Virgin Mary a "whore". There's also a great deal of disturbing, somewhat anti-religious imagery. In the surreal and gut-wrenching montage of horrors at the climax (which honestly is where the film loses you completely, due to the content and due to the lack of good storytelling) there are several extremely disturbing things. (i.e. severely burned demons in priest outfits appearing to make masturbation gestures with dildos, an infant doll crucified with barbed wire in hell, a gang of hypnotized women naked with disturbing demonic masks, the violent birth of a spider/squid creature, showing a friendly local priest as a pervert in a nightmare sequence, and a coven of nasty old witches: bare-ass naked.) Now most of these are only a few seconds long, but still, the disturbing factor is very high, and this is the main bit where the film goes too far, even more so than before. I'm assuming this was supposed to be a disorienting, nightmarish, hellish, artsy segment, and it did that well, if Zombie was going for that. Hell, I was somewhat offended by much of the imagery here, and I'm pretty nonchalant about gory films, and also pretty nonchalant about religion. The film also has a few plot holes throughout, and, unlike other Zombie films, really has no resolution or conclusion. Now, I could go on about the negative of the film for a long, long time, so here's some things I enjoyed. I thought Bruce Davison did a good job, I liked him the best of all. The supporting cast were good, too. The music and atmosphere are very surreal and creepy. The editing is pretty well done, and the cinematography is great. The references to classic films are clever, and the bits where it's genuinely scary (not just shocking) are genuinely frightening. The dream sequences throughout are creepy and disorienting. The news bit at the end is pretty creepy, but doesn't make up for the abysmal ending. I give Zombie props for trying to do an artsy, but balls-to-the-walls horror film, even if it goes way too far in a lot of places, and isn't all that good. The Lords of Salem is a very effective film, but not in a good way. Zombie's quality of films started in mediocre, then got very good, then sank into pretty bad. This film doesn't match the quality it was supposed to have. It is not on par with Insidious, Sinister, or even Zombie's own The Devil's Rejects. Zombie tried something new, it didn't work, he'll try again. I hope that he remains successful enough to do another film like Rejects. I was especially disappointed because I was very excited for this film. The previews in front of the film (for films such as The Purge, The Conjuring, The East, No One Lives, and You're Next) were better than the actual movie. I only recommend Lords to only the hardcore Zombie fans or hardcore horror fans, and they might not even like it. 2.5/5 stars.
(Images: Wikipedia, IMDb.com)
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