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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














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