The Lords of Salem

When I first saw John Carpenters's Halloween, I didn't sleep for a week.  That is no exaggeration.  I actually turned my bed toward my closet because I knew Michael Myers was hiding behind my corduroy pants and clip-on ties.  I even mapped out my escape were he to enter my room: Through the bathroom, into my parents’ bedroom, through the living room, and out the front door.  Sorry Mom and Dad, you're on your own.  I was only eight when I first became acquainted with Michael Myers and his creator, John Carpenter.  Since then, my strong connection to the classic Halloween has become less fear-based and more one based on respect.  To me, Halloween is the perfect horror film.  Dean Cundey's dynamic lighting mixed with Carpenter's haunting score make for a masterpiece of primal dread.

So, when Rob Zombie announced he would be directing a remake of Halloween, I was both excited and apprehensive.  I had a lukewarm reaction to both The Devil's Rejects and House of a Thousand Corpses.  Some of their gore was stomach-turning, and I did dig their 1970s exploitation aesthetic, but I found the characters to be flat and the directing sloppy.  Zombie's Halloween solidified my opinion of the director and his talent.  He took my most beloved film and subtracted all the nuance and universal fear and replaced it with foul language and annoying characters.  I'm pretty sure the word "nuance" isn't in Zombie's vocabulary. His dictionary probably skips from "nu" to "nub."  I'm not even going to mention Zombie's Halloween 2 and all that horse imagery.  Ugh.

Well, Mr. Zombie, you have outdone yourself.  Zombie's new film The Lords of Salem is his worst yet.  It's bad. Really, really bad.  It's one of those films that is so atrocious I think I may not like movies anymore.  When I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I had to go watch some Hitchcock to remind myself that film can be intelligent and enjoyable.  Right now I'm watching some early John Carpenter to wash the memories of The Lords of Salem out of my mind.  I'm feeling better by the minute.  Wait...I'm okay now.  Movies are good.  I like them.  Okay, good.

It's never a good sign when half of the audience leaves during the first thirty minutes of a movie.  This happened during my screening of The Lords of Salem, and I sorely wanted to join the exodus.  The remaining audience played Angry Birds and chatted on their phones.  I didn't even try to stop them.  In fact, that one couple had some really good opinions on the state of the economy...

The Lords of Salem is just an ugly film.  The actors are ugly.  That's probably a mean thing to say, but the whole cast looks like coupon day at a Big Lots in rural Indiana.  Believe me, I've been there.  It's scary stuff.  It doesn't help that most of the overweight and elderly actors are naked throughout the film.  Take the bathroom scene from The Shining and multiply that by forty-two.  There's a whole lot of skin and a whole lot of varicose veins.  I'm going to leave it there.

The best looking person is the film is Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, but that's not saying much.  I really question his choice to cast her yet again.  With every one of Zombie's films, she gets a bigger role.  Even Ed Wood had the good sense to give his wife a mere bit part in Bride of the Monster.  The first time we see Sheri, she is lying naked on her bed.  It's not a bad scene.  Zombie seems to be saying, "Hey look at my wife!  Isn't she hot?"  She's okay dude, but your movie sucks.

The cinematography isn't doing the actors any favors.  Every light is overexposed and lens flares flash across the screen.  In the beginning, it looks like a serious artistic choice but, by the third scene, it looks like poor film craft.  Every window is blown out, giving the characters distracting halos.  I'm not sure how you make old naked bodies even uglier, but cinematographer Brandon Trost does it.  When the light wasn't blinding me, I was squinting to make out the action.  Half the film is out of focus.  I haven't seen this many blurry images since my Senior film back in college.  I don't want to talk about it.  It's embarrassing.

When I could see clearly what was happening, I was disgusted by what I saw.  Zombie puts some truly shocking images on the screen.  Hey, there's a priest getting a blow job.  There's a little devil that looks like a badly burned Mickey Rooney.  Look over there, it's a Catholic Cardinal masturbating!  I have no problem with disturbing imagery.  I find fault with Zombie's uncontrolled and lazy depiction of the gross stuff.  There is no philosophy to his horror.  It's just grotesque stream-of-consciousness.  I believe that great horror has a beautiful side.  The films of Clive Barker and David Cronenberg show how the frightening can reflect the goodness in the world.  Rob Zombie has no such agenda.  He just wants to gross me out and ruin my day.

Still, I think I'm going to be okay.  This Carpenter movie has really done the trick.  I'm just finishing up some Kurt Russell bad-assery and feeling mighty nice.  It's good to know that for every awful Rob Zombie film there are many more great horror films. And, it’s nice to see that "nuance" is still in some dictionaries.