Review of 31 (2016) by Johnny T — 05 Oct 2016

31 is the latest horror film from writer/director/musician Rob Zombie, which features a truly awesome premise, but is unfortunately polluted with all of the awful tropes that come with any of his films and I really struggled to give a crap about anything that was going on.

The film is about a group of carnival workers who are abducted on Halloween night and forced to partake in a sadistic game called "31" where they must survive 12 hours against a gang of sadistic clowns.

Sounds pretty awesome right? It's not at all and plays out like a really lame re-imagining of The Running Man. Zombie's go-to for character development is vulgar, trailer trash, and from the moment we meet our protagonists.

..you are 100% indifferent to whether they live or die; a pretty big problem in a horror film! The performances vary in quality throughout with one guy putting on the worst Jamaican accent I've ever heard, two performers going way overboard to be "psychopaths", and as usual, Sheri Moon Zombie is only in it because her husband is the director; that shit needs to STOP! The only saving graces here are the brief appearances from Malcolm McDowell as the leader of the gang and the truly remarkable performance from Richard Brake as Doom-Head, their main enforcer.

Brake gives a disturbing and very well-written monologue at the beginning of the film, that unfortunately skews expectations into thinking this film will be anything more than complete trash, but he really is the diamond in the rough presence here.

Honestly, I don't know what it is about Zombie's style and his incessant need to make the most vile, unlikeable, douchebags for his protagonists and by this point, I'm just bored with his filmmaking.

The camerawork/editing is horrendous, the performances are painful at times, and the gore/kills are okay, but nothing to write home about; the one thing you think would be a highlight. 31 was crowd-funded because no studio wanted to touch it, and after seeing the finished product, I think it's time Rob stepped away from behind the camera and stopped pretending that The Devil's Rejects wasn't a fluke!