"The *yawn* Lords of Stale-m"
A female Radio DJ receives a mysterious record that upon playing brings her own personal demons and other evil forces to once again plague her and the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts with witchcraft and Satan worship.
A female Radio DJ receives a mysterious record that upon playing brings her own personal demons and other evil forces to once again plague her and the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts with witchcraft and Satan worship.
Rob Zombie returns to the director's chair after a successful run as the Halloween franchise's reinventor with a supposed original creation. Unfortunately he cast the lead as his wife Sherri Moon Zombie, who must slowly walk through a dim retelling of Rosemary's Baby by an undead Kubrick clone. Stanley K's "The Shining" mesmerised with shots of hotel hallways, inanimate objects became frightening through shot selection and background music. Zombie tries hard to replicate the magic in The Shining, but is instead treading awfully close to plagiarism rather than perhaps intended homage. The story too, being a gothic-emo-rocknroll retelling of Polanski's Rosemary Baby with pieces of Friedkin's The Exorcist, The Lords of Salem ends up a mash-up potpourri of 1970s Horror Classics with a 1990's Rock Star aesthetic that starts off well enough in the first act but soon just merely goes through the cliches and culminates in a ending whimper that confuses with its sameness.
Rob Zombie obviously wants to be the Tarantino of Horror, but he's sadly without the script writing skill or ability to reinvent rather than reiterate. Sherri's acting (despite the white girl dreadlocked hairdo) is surprisingly passable, although one gets the feeling her performance was constructed in the editing room, the amateurish portions carefully trimmed around. What is surprising was some of the truly surreal and beautiful imagery of the dream sequences that were without fail ruined by terrible practical special effects. Lots of rubber masks, rubber midget suits, rubber tentacles, obvious makeup or puppets, things better left in the VHS hell of the 80s Horror FX. I would never pine for CGI over practical but every effect in LOS looks cheap and terible on film.
With some good veteran actors and a quite good act one, Lords of Salem ends up wasting everyone's time with depressingly derivative story telling and laughably bad special effects. The Art house feel Zombie tried so hard to achieve becomes a nightmare of his own making, showcasing his vast shortcomings as a filmmaker and auteur-to-be.
3.5 Anti-Mary's out of 10 (BAD)
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