LORDS OF SALEM

First of all, there's nothing scary about a bunch of naked old bitches, sorry, witches, cackling and spurting out a bunch of fucking nonsense about worshipping Lucifer and rejecting Christ and on and on. That opening made me tune out immediately. Yawn.

Now, I like Rob Zombie, I like his music, I like his art stuff & I quite like about half of his film work. So, I stuck with it.

The story is about a local radio DJ Heidi, played by Zombie's wife. (Hmn.) who recieves a mysterious wooden box, containing a vinyl record, from what she assumes to be a band, called The Lords Of Salem. She plays the record, it sounds weird (Its a pretty awesome little tune, thought I.) and from there on she starts getting creepy visions, which grow more bizarre and more real each time.

The film's actors are alright, but there are far too many cameos which take you out of the film. I really dislike cameos, unless its done in a smart way. To be fair, the cameos here were not as dumb as the Franco Nero one in Django Unchained, its just that there were too many in here.

You'll notice rips from Rosemary's Baby, the Shining & of course The Exorcist, which would be ok if they'd expanded on them.

The freaky imagery is hit and miss. Some of it works, a LOT of it doesn't. Can't blame a guy for trying though.
Musical stabs. Goddamn, I'm sick of those. Y'know, the sudden "shock" music you get to instigate a jump scare out of you. That does not work unless you are an eleven year old girl. It's a shame they used that here because the suspenseful stuff had me going. It's just like a disappointing punchline.

For the most part, I like how the movie is shot. Rob Zombie does know how to set up the camera and some of the stuff in here is really cool. I like his corridor tracking shots, they made me feel uneasy.

Pacing is an issue here. I find that slow burning horror films are often the best ones, I mentioned The Shining & Rosemary's Baby earlier, but also Don't Look Now is a perfect example of the slow burning horror film. Here though, Zombie's film wanders aimlessly at points and a scene will climax with a weird, freaky image, that has nothing to do with anything else thats gone on before (& no pay off later.)

This is one you should check out though, I do think a lot of people will enjoy this. It's got a feel of a cult film and fans of Zombie's are sure to enjoy at least aspects of it.

For me though, it just needed a stronger narrative and some proper character development, as none of the characters here have any depth.

TWO FUCKS