Review of The Devil's Rejects (2005) by Zakk H — 15 Apr 2015

"The Devils Reject" is a sadistic and appalling movie, yet undeniably one of the best psychological horror films made in recent memory. It is based on characters from the mind of heavy metal god Rob Zombie. This movie features necrophilia, cold-blooded murder, mental and physical torture, and a kick ass sound track to top it off. Fans of the horror genre will definitely have nothing to complain about with this soon to be classic.

Zombie's sophomore film is a vast improvement over its prequel "House of 1000 Corpses", which I and many other fans could consider less than par, especially for the abilities of such a creative person. "Reject's" step up starts with much better costume and make-up design. This is most noticeable with the Otis Driftwood character, who looks much more horrifying and psychopathic in this movie, as apposed to his cheesy goth-like design in the prequel. Furthermore the photography has shifted from a much more psychedelic style as in the first movie, to a classic 70's style of filming a movie. This is probably why this movie was rated much better by critics than it predecessor.

Another merit to this film is the soundtrack, which features many great classic rock bands and their most famous songs. While this soundtrack might not appeal to everyone it does feature the likes of the Allman Brother Band, Three Dog Night, and Joe Walsh. The final scene of "Rejects" features Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird and epic shootout with police. The only sounds during this scene are the gun shots and Free Bird playing, while this song might not be everyones favorite, it was well used in this scene, and the pace of filming fits almost perfectly with this song.

Zombie succeeded in making a classic style horror movie, where as the fear doesn't come from something jumping out at you, such as with the "Paranormal Activity" franchise, it comes more from a "this is horrible and really terrifying" type of filming. This movie will only have you jumping out of your seat due to disgust (which is a good thing IMO), it at no point relies on cheesy jump out of the closet tactics. While this movie is filmed in a classic style, I would choose to compare it most to the remake of "The Hills have Eyes". Both films where unrelenting in their horror, and used grotesque design to push the fear factor almost to a breaking point. I would say this would please almost all horror fans, while offending most any other fan of different types of movies.

I like that there are many different film genres, in addition I love the many different styles within the horror genre. My opinion is that the style that "The Devils Rejects" is filmed in is arguably the best. It had me at many times sitting on the edge of my seat blighting my lip, asking myself what is going to happen next. I don't know many horror directors who have been able to capture the nature and characters of psychopaths as well as zombie. Most films in this genre give the serial killers no character, and in my opinion this is why this film shines so well in a genre saturated with shitty movies. I believe given a few more years this movie will be cited as one of the classics just like "Psycho" and the 'Exorcist".