Review of The Lords of Salem (2013) by David D — 18 Apr 2013

The Lords of Salem (my movie review).

...just saw Rob Zombies, "The Lords of Salem" at the Homestead Theatre with Shawn Bakaj. Just as Zombie said himself in an interview, this movie does turn out to be kind of a departure from his other movies such as House of 1000 Corpses. As he described that it would be, Salem had a different look than some of the hand held shots of Corpses. This movie was very Kubrickian or Kubrickesque if you like. Again Zombie himself compared it to a Kubrick movie, and anyone familiar with The Shining will see the resemblance to it. Zombies and Kubrick's lighting differed, but on camera angle and format, Zombie really Shined on in his new film. The format and structure, camera movement and scope were very similar to that of Stanley Kubrick's, The Shining. The hallway of Sherry Moon Zombies character was filmed or looked to be filmed in much the same slow controlled style as some hallways in the Overlook Hotel; to me even the wall paper patterns were similar. It also seemed to me that some of the musical score was similar to the composers picked by Kubrick and used in The Shining; I even caught a heart beat pattern within some of the music, again as was used in The Shining. More similarities to Kubrick's ambiguous master piece which Zombie paid homage to were the dissolves, the use of black screen with a day of the week shown at screen center, and steady controlled camera movement utilizing slow moving far shots slid to close ups and vice versa. This movie was grand in scope and different enough from Zombies other films that some may not appreciate this.