31

Grade: C

Though his music has never been my thing, I am a strong fan of Rob Zombie as a film director. If you can believe it, he has one that is in my top 10 or 15 favorite movies of all time – and it’s a sequel. My journey with him began in the fall of 2000 when I first saw the trailer for House of 1000 Corpses – his much-delayed debut. So delayed, that we finally got to see it in 2003. While it isn’t a GREAT film, it’s campy and silly in a guilty pleasure way, and at least made me interested enough to await whatever Zombie had up his sleeve next. In 2005, he came out with The Devil’s Rejects, which was a continuation of the Corpses story. Rather than reuse the same format for the sequel in hopes of making lightning strike twice, Zombie wisely abandoned the feel of House of 1000 Corpses and started fresh with a new genre, better character development, and mostly different locations. It was a brilliant decision, and made me realize Zombie was the real deal as a director. Though a sequel, The Devil’s Rejects can stand on its own. You do not have to have seen Corpses first, but if you do, you’ll have a leg up on things. That is one of the reasons I admire it. I make a point to watch both movies once a year.

After a few in the interim that went unseen by me, he has a brand new film out called 31. It arrives in theatres in limited release later this month, but you can already rent/stream it at home. It is Halloween in 1976, and a handful of carnival workers, while on their way to a gig, are captured, brought to a run-down warehouse, and forced to participate in a game called 31. They have to survive 12 hours in this little hell, with 6 sadistic killers wandering around, who go by the names of Sick Head, Psycho Head, Schizo Head, Death Head, Sex Head, and Doom Head. After sitting through 31’s hour and 42 minutes, I’ve finally put my finger on why Corpses and Rejects worked, and this one mostly just doesn’t, and it’s because the former two often came up for air in the midst of the violence and gore, and let us get to know the characters and even root for a couple. 31 is a near-unrelentingly bleak, dark, sad, intense, bloody journey. I didn’t care about or even remember most of the main characters, the lighting was dark and made things hard to see during the already confusingly choreographed fight scenes, and there were so many quick cuts and shaky-cam bits. I’m not entertained by that. 31 begins and ends very strongly, though. In the last half hour, when we are introduced to the final killer, we get a taste of his background and how he got to be in his position. I also really enjoyed the last scene, which was a fun throwback to the way The Devil’s Rejects ended, even if it isn’t realistic (It was awfully convenient that no other cars happened to be driving by in those moments). Yes, there are brief glimpses of the cleverness that put Zombie on the map, but overall, this is a misguided and poor representation of what fans have come to expect from him. Flip things around and put the focus on the villains (particularly Doom Head) and the motives/mechanics involved with setting up the game, while making the bland protagonists mere supporting parts, back off on the rote horror cliches, and this could’ve been something really special. As it stands, this will not be something I watch every year, and I’m glad I didn’t pay to see it.

Grade: C

PS – Zombie directed a Netflix stand-up comedy special, Tom Papa: Live in New York City, which my children and I watch, listen to, and quote frequently. I don’t know what attracted RZ to this project, but it’s the kind of out-of-character career move that was like when David Lynch did The Straight Story, or when Wes Craven did Music of the Heart.