Devil’s Rejects

Genre: Grindhouse Exploitation

If House of 1,000 Corpses was Rob Zombie’s awkward (and falsely titled) welcome party to the horror genre, then Devil’s Rejects is his reaction to there being no cake. Infinitely more interesting and bloody than House, Devil’s Rejects hearkens back to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre with a grimy, hyper-realistic story of truly deplorable characters lacking one single redeeming quality. Unless you’re a fan of their sadistic, F-ed up sense of humor. Actually, that’s kind of a requirement in order to enjoy this movie.

The story follows a family of serial killers from House of 1000 Corpses, on the run from an insane sheriff looking to avenge his brother’s death. Here’s a truly brutal movie where the main characters are actually the villains. They perform hideous acts on unsuspecting people (poor Brian Posehn!), including removing the face of a man and placing it on his wife. (See what I meant about sadistic sense of humor?) This movie is so beyond pitch black that even when it seems the poor woman has escaped certain death, she blindly runs into the middle of the road and gets liquefied by a truck. Yeah. It’s one of those movies. Hell, even the sheriff is out of his mind, so hell-bent on revenge that he’s willing to break every law in the book just to satisfy his own bloodlust.

Unlike Teeth or Final Destination 2, Devil’s Rejects is not a playful horror movie. It’s a sickening spectacle of violence that’ll make you want to shower after watching it. And probably most horrific of all, Devil’s Rejects will stick Free Bird in your head for the rest of the night. Despite this (or maybe because of it!), I completely recommend Rejects as a well-executed descent into madness that accomplishes the goal it sets out to do: make you cover your eyes in fear.

While writing about Devil’s Rejects, I found a website called Kids In Mind, which reviews movies for parents. Unsurprisingly, the movie scores a 10 in violence, gore, and profanity, but also offers the types of discussion topics parents can share with their children after watching the movie. They are: Family, mass murder, sexual abuse, mental illness, bestiality, fate, revenge, death of a sibling, vengeance, justice, sadism. I love that family is the first discussion topic to cover.

MUST-SEE MOMENT: I’d hate to call any moment in this movie must-see, because it says a lot about my own sick sense of humor, but the motel scene in which Otis and Baby Firefly hold a country band captive simply for their own amusement is probably the most effective sequence in the movie. Watching people beg for their lives, you get the sinking feeling that NOTHING they say will save them. Otis and Baby’s gleeful reactions to their pleas set up the dread and central fear of the movie — There is no reasoning with these killers.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 6:17 am and is filed under Film, Horror Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.