Skip to main content

31 (2016) - Rob Zombie



They can't all be winners. If you've seen one Rob Zombie movie then you've seen them all. They have the same cliche'd cuts and edits. They use the same type of soundtrack. They have the same actors and carry the same feeling. Some directors can pull it off really well. But Rob just feels like he is out of ideas.

On October 30th, a group of carnival workers are abducted, tortured and held against their will at some weird compound called MurderWorld. They try to survive as their captors force them into a deadly game called 31. They are hunted and tested for the pleasure of some weird powdered wig wearing psychopaths.

I feel as if Rob Zombie thinks that it's his duty to bring back sleazy grindhouse cinema. Its almost like these movies are exploitation-sploitation. Obscenity is commonplace. Mutilation, gore and dismemberment are merely filler moments in between thin layers of obscured normalcy. Grindhouse is less of a film style and more of a natural occurrence in Rob Zombie's world. It's like his films are perpetually set in the seventies and everyone went to the Quentin Tarantino school for dialogue.

The survival game is a pretty neat device. I like the killer clowns. But something just doesn't click. Not all of the movies that I watch on Halloween can be winners. I don't know why I keep trusting Rob Zombie movies with Sherri Moon in them. She is not the second coming of Linnea Quigley or anything like that. She just has no range. Her characters are virtually all the same in varying degrees of sanity.

This is a really intensely gruesome film from beginning to end. Its ugly on all aspects. I wouldn't really sit down to watch this with friends. Instead check out Battle Royal and The Running Man. Both are superior films. The latter being an action movie. Where Rob Zombie fails he can choose to learn a lot. Unfortunately, he just doesn't. Maybe a trip outside of horror is needed. Look at what happened to Richard Kelly. People got wise.

Director: Rob Zombie
Producer: Rob Zombie and Crowdfunding
Writer: Rob Zombie
Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Meg Foster,  Richard Brake and Malcolm McDowell
Studio: Bow + Arrow Entertainment, PalmStar Media and Protagonist Pictures[2]
Release Date: January 23, 2016 (Sundance)
Country: United States
Did ya know: 31 was re-edited twice before the MPAA gave the film an R rating. The first two submissions came back with an NC-17














Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Human Monster (1939) - Walter Summers

Bela Lugosi turns in a fantastic performance. It is right on par with the exact same films that had made him famous like Dracula . My personal favorite being The Black Cat . Like the latter, this film suffered from poor circulation and lack of advertisement. Either that or the public wasn't interested in seeing Lugosi in anything else other than his famous bloodsucker. This film has a broad and well acted plot that was rich with detail.  Lugosi has two sides in this picture. His well loved and compassionate side. The other is a strict, brutal lone shark that acts as a sinister villain to blind and handicapped people. He really brutalizes his victims. It's a macabre message to pay your bills.  The film is slow moving and plagued by the usual setbacks from its time. Most of the nation wasn't really that concerned with horror at the time. But studios knew that they would always have an audience. This film is a prime example of that. It's sad because it's 
1 comment
Not scared yet? »

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t
Post a Comment
Not scared yet? »

Inseminoid (1981) - Norman J. Warren

What can be said for mindless schlock pictures like this one. They were pumped out in droves during the eighties. Inseminoid !? give me a break! It sounds like some pre-pubescent teenage boys came up with the title. On the plus side the movie isn't horrible to look at and it has a decent amount of gore. If you can separate yourself from the political incorrectness, then you might have a perfectly decent Sci-Fi Monster Feature.  A research team exploring caves on Jupiter accidentally awakens an ancient alien that rapes and impregnates one of the team members. She suffers from terrible shock and trauma, leading to a complete mental breakdown as her pregnancy accelerates faster and faster. Feeling threatened she decides to kill anyone she deems a threat. Can the rest of the research team survive or will they all become victims of INSEMINOID! Apparently this movie had a million dollar budget. That's really shocking considering the outcome of the picture. The acting
Post a Comment
Not scared yet? »