The Lords of Salem

Rob Zombie has jumped the shark. While I loved his one-two punch of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, his remake of Halloween and its sequel were two of the worst excuses for horror movies I’ve ever seen (I named Halloween II as my worst movie of 2009). I don’t know if he took the critical and financial failure of Halloween II to heart and decided to go in a different direction for his next project – The Lords of Salem, a psychological horror film unlike anything he’s ever made before. Whatever the case may have been, he made a movie that is completely unwatchable.

Heidi Hawthorne (Sheri Moon Zombie) is a DJ in the infamous Massachusetts town of Salem, and when she receives an album in the mail from “The Lords of Salem” she begins to experience violent flashbacks of the witch trials. As the hallucinations intensify she begins to realize that she is taking part in a grand revenge scheme that could consume the world.

This will be a short review since there isn’t anything going on in this movie. Basically The Lords of Salem is a 90 minute long music video filled to the brim with gratuitous granny nudity, gore and tracking shots. The plot is non-existent and what is there is an excuse to allow Zombie to show off boring and cliché nightmare imagery that grates on the nerves. Every aspect of the movie falls flat on its face, from the characters to the silly and unintentionally hilarious scene involving the Devil himself. Nothing works. Nothing at all.

Zombie continues to cast his talentless wife in lead roles and I can’t understand why. She has never been a good actress (she’s always been the weakest link, even in The Devil’s Rejects) and ruins every scene she’s in, which is the whole movie. The supporting cast consists of genre favorites (Dee Wallace, Judy Geeson, Meg Foster, Patricia Quinn, Ken Foree, Maria Conchita Alonso, Andrew Prine), all are wasted on this tripe and are either given nothing of note to do or end up making complete fools of themselves. Zombie seems to focus more on his throwback casts than his scripts. Only Bruce Davison (the original Willard, X-Men, White House Down) seems to be taking his part seriously and is trying to inject some life into his character.

The movie makes no sense, is overlong, tedious and at times even gets overly pretentious. It drags on with nothing of note happening for long stretches, there are no scares, no character development and no brains behind the scenes. This flick is a joke from start to finish and is one of the worst films I have EVER seen. Actually, calling it a “film” is an insult to every film ever made – including Battlefield Earth.

Rob Zombie needs to stop making movies and focus on making some kick ass music again (his last few albums were just as bad as his last few films). He tried to make a version of Rosemary’s Baby as if Ken Russell had directed it, and in the end it’s as if Zombie were pointlessly masturbating just like those burnt bishops in one of his inane hallucination sequences. I’m pretty sure that after watching this garbage I am now sterile. Thanks Bobby.

0 out of 5

p.s. Actually there is one part of the movie I enjoyed – the music on the album sent by “The Lords of Salem”. That’s 10 seconds of good in an ocean of feces, so take that as you will.