The Devil's Rejects

Director - Rob Zombie

Starring - Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, William Forsythe.

The music-video director turned movie director is normally someone to fear, but what about the musician turned movie director?  Can a person who masters one art form transfer his or her talents to another?  When Rob Zombie, of White Zombie fame, gave the world House of 1000 Corpses the answer was no, but then he followed it up with this half-sequel (in that it features some of the same characters, but not a continuation of the storyline) known as The Devil's Rejects - a movie with a smaller budget and more input from Zombie rather than the studio.  So is this indicative of what he is capable of?

The Devil's Rejects are a family of serial killers living in Alabama, who when we join them at the start of the film, about to get caught by the police at their rundown cottage.  However, the resourceful Firefly family - Otis (Bill Moseley, Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook) - don't come quietly and shoot their way out and head towards the sanctuary provided by their half-brother Charlie (Ken Foree), picking up daddy Firefly, Cutter (Sid Haig) on the way.  But little do they know they are being tracked by Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe) who is desperate for revenge.  

Rob Zombie obviously loves his 70s horror and exploitation films, and as he did in 1000 Corpses he homages many throughout The Devil's Rejects, most notably, again, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  It's influence is everywhere; the opening is a direct imitation of TCM's, the family are similarly sick and disturbed and their home could be Ed Gein's weekend place, there's even a runaway victim who meets a would-be helper, only to find he's no saviour.  Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw is the embodiment of the phrase 'often imitated, never bettered' and The Devil's Rejects doesn't come close to its visceral, relentless horror.

But this is not to say Rob Zombie hasn't dreamt up some real nastiness, because the central part of the movie has some full fat ugliness which changes its entire tone.  Until 35 minutes in, it revels in being sickly amusing.  For example, when we meet Cutter, he's dressed and made-up as his Captain Spaulding clown alter ego and happily humping Ginger Lynn Allen, a scene which abruptly ends with a nice punch line and some funny and very non-PC dialogue.  Then, elsewhere, Otis and Baby take some hostages and while we expect the same old, same old, Zombie steps up with a truly grim and nasty abuse sequence and all the joking stops.  It continues in this vein with some murders, torture and general unpleasantness until the uninspired and unsatisfying ending which is also ripped from several other sources, but to give away which would spoil the 'surprise'.

All this referencing other, better movies continues with the actors, so we have Ken Foree from Dawn of the Dead and Micheal Berryman from The Hills Have Eyes.  Much of the movie has been shot handheld and it has a washed-out, grainy look, plus there is plenty of exploitative nudity and tons of swearing.  All of this adds up to make The Devil's Rejects a very odd film.  When it's nasty, it does so very effectively, in characters like Sid Haig's Captain Spaulding you have a proper, frightening horror villain and when the script is funny, you do have a giggle; it's odd then that these ingredients don't mix together to create a tasty horror movie.  

The Devil's Rejects fails in this respect due to its lack of commitment, it just cannot seem to settle into being either an amusing/sick horror, a filthy serial killer account or a 70s grot homage.  It's not bad at any of them, but when they're all mashed together each loses a degree of effectiveness and the whole becomes confused.  There is a brilliant horror movie struggling to get out from inside Rob Zombie and although there are flashes of it in The Devil's Rejects, it doesn't quite get there.  That said, visually it hits the spot and each main actor portrays their family member with gusto, making it watchable, but frustratingly average.

The Disc

The two disc edition of The Devil's Rejects is the one to buy for the second disc's 30 Days In Hell Making-of documentary.  It's longer than the film itself and covers pre-production and every shooting day.  There are also a few deleted scenes (including Rosario Dawson's), other sundry music videos and a tribute to the late Matthew McGrory, who played Tiny, and to whom the movie is dedicated.  Disc One has two commentaries and the movie has a Dolby Digital and DTS soundtrack, neither of which were outstanding.

Buy The Devil's Rejects from Play.com for just 4.99.

Diary of the Dead

Director: George A. Romero

Starring: Michelle Morgan, Shawn Roberts, Joshua Close and Amy Lalonde.

At the Gerardmer Festival of Fantastic Arts 2008, George Romero's Diary of the  Dead was awarded the Critics Award.  Coincidentally, Cloverfield was also playing  at this festival and the similarities between the two are obvious; both are shot  handheld guerilla-style and cover a catastrophic event through the eyes and lenses of amateur moviemakers and both were released within a few months of  each other at the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008.  What makes this  important?  Well, seeing as Cloverfield is a tight and exciting thriller and Diary of the Dead is tedious and embarrassing; how on Earth did it win?

Diary is the latest in George A. Romero's line of zombie movies, but instead of continuing the narrative built through Night, Dawn, Day and Land of the Dead, it sets itself up at the start of a zombie plague in modern day.  A group of student filmmakers happen to be shooting a horror movie when the dead start to walk and the director, Jason Creed, decides to document the events to bring the truth to the people via online video.  His documentary is called The Death of Death and this is what we watch as Diary unfolds.  Creed is accompanied by his leading man and lady, his girlfriend, his professor and a couple of other forgettable non-characters, all wanting to return to the safety of 'home'.

It's not the idea behind Diary of the Dead which is bad, it's the execution.  To see the dead returning to life filmed intimately by terrified citizens has the potential to be a frightening movie, in the way Cloverfield is a scary personal view of something invading Manhattan, but instead it concentrates on bickering characters and their pointless exploits, while the zombies are treated as a distraction who serve only to stop Romero from returning to the endless, meaningless dialogue.  The script issues are only part of the problem though.  Because we are watching a film within a film, the inclusion of editing and musical queues tend to make you forget it's supposed to be 'found footage' and you catch yourself thinking it's just a very poor horror movie.  Unfortunately, it is.

For a start, it's packed full of cliches.  We get characters stating the obvious at every opportunity, we have a gun jamming at an inopportune moment, a dead family terrorising their daughter and a zombie we thought was dead leaping back to 'life' to deliver a shock.  If it didn't say it was directed by Romero at the end of the movie, I would assume it was directed by Catchphrase host Roy Walker, whose only advice to the cast consisted of  'say what you see'.  Even the voiceover offered by Creed and his girlfriend Debra gives up halfway through as if they ran out of things to say.

Thanks to the poor script, the actors fall into one of two categories, bland or irritating.  Either way, you won't care when they are inevitably picked off by the zombies.  The only character who offers some originality and the movies one and only laugh is Samuel the Amish guy – and he is featured for less than five minutes.  The zombies themselves should have been an ever-present terror, however when they do turn up, they are despatched with ease but only after they have done the damage they need to in order to move the plot forward.  The bare minimum of prosthetic make-up is used (if any at all) and is substituted instead by CGI, which fails to match the wonderful wetness of Dawn and Day's FX.  

Cloverfield absorbs and thrills for 85% of its 75 minutes, Diary of the Dead bores for 99% of its overly-long 90 minutes.  Fans of Romero's previous work won't even find anything to like, as none of his trademarks, such as social comment, suspense and unique characters, are present, giving the film a faceless hack-at-work feel.  Diary of the Dead deserves to be forgotten both as an installment of the Living Dead saga and an example of Romero's ability as a writer and director.  He, and you, are worthy of spending their time on far better things than this.