comment #1

DeafBrownTrashPunk says ...

Rob Zombie could have at least created a new horror franchise instead of "rebooting" (i hate that pretentious word) Halloween movies.

comment #2

Chase Kahn says ...

Even Zombie's best film sucks ('The Devil's Rejects) -- 'Halloween' just cemented his status as a complete fraud...

comment #3

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

Love Rob Zombie as a musician, or used to, anyway (at the risk of adopting LexG-speak, "White Zombie fuckin' OWNS you), but as a director so far his material has been pretty damn lacking. He's tried some interesting stuff, but it just hasn't quite worked out.

I just don't think he is a born filmmaker. Even his most mediocre music manages to be more cinematic than his best film -- not a good sign.

comment #4

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

I guess that's why he is making another?

Try and try again, I guess...

comment #5

rr3333 says ...

Awaiting Marilyn Manson's version of 'Parent Trap'.

This is almost the equivalent of Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Keaunu Reeves and Bruce Willis performing in Rock Bands.

These guys should stick with what they do best (although that's debatable where Zombie is concerned. Not sure he's good at anything except applying makeup).

comment #6

actionman says ...

I thought The Devil's Rejects was just about perfect in terms of what it set out to accomplish. It was completely unrelenting and very well directed.

Haven't seen any of his other work.

comment #7

televisiontears says ...

It sounds like he has no clue why the first one was so goddamn awful. He actually says he wishes he could have made the origin story the whole first movie. And not only did Zombie drain the Michael Myers character of all his mystery and horror, now Myers is going to be tormented by the ghosts of his mother and his 10 year old self?

I call shenanigans!

comment #8

Josh Massey says ...

Halloween 2 ("I've got more taste in my penis") is currently filming in my dad's neighborhood, and he wanted me to tell him what it was about.

I just told him it was probably best to stay indoors.

comment #9

Renfield says ...

I had a conversation with Zombie once and we discussed our passion for old, spooky, B&W horror movies. The kind of movie that relies on atmosphere rather than gore. He really knew his stuff but I find it disappointing that he doesn't apply that attitude to his films.

comment #10

televisiontears says ...

That's interesting, Renfield. I've never met him, but he strikes me as the kind of guy who appreciates certain older films more for their kitsch value than anything else.

comment #11

Rich S. says ...

Zombie was terrific as the host of TCM's short-lived Underground series. He appeared to have actually assisted in selection of the movies in question because he knew them inside-out. Kind of like Robert Osbourne with dreadlocks.

TCM has continued off-and-on to show cult movies in the middle of the night on weekends. But it hasn't been the same without Zombie.

comment #12

Big Black says ...

It's as if both the Platinum Dunes shit-house and Rob Zombie have both been tasked with making all these movie psychopaths less scary.

It took a big genre franchise failure (along with, apparently, covering his lead actress in a bucket of blood) for him to realize that the Halloween story was originally more about Laurie than it was about Michael Myers? Hint for Rob: the more we understand Michael, or Leatherface, or any of these other mythic killers, the less frightening and more pathetic and pedestrian they appear. Sometimes I wonder if anyone working in modern horror with a budget ever opens a fucking newspaper.

comment #13

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

RZ is a real case study in how having passion and knowledge for a particular genre of film sometimes just ain't enough.

Gots to have da chops, yo.

comment #14

Gordon27 says ...

I'm curious -- what horror filmmaker putting out movies nowadays has better chops than Zombie? The only person I can think of is Eli Roth, and I'm not sure of that at all. I think that there have been a lot of recent attempts to make throwbacks to '70's horror, and Zombie's was the one that came by far the closest to the mark.

However, I should say, I have not seen 'Halloween', and it sounds dreadful.

comment #15

Ghost072 says ...

There are a lot of horror directors working today with better chops than Rob Zombie. Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Haute Tension) and Brad Anderson (Session 9 and The Machinist) are two of the best mainstream directors of contemporary horror. Anderson's Session 9 is one of the scariest horror films to come out in 20 years, IMO, and Aja's Hills Have Eyes is one of the few horror remakes that is better than the original film (Carpenter's The Thing would be the other). Personally, I think Eli Roth is one step above Zombie; he is definitely a better director, but he is better at disgusting the viewer than truly scaring them and it doesn't take much skill to do that.

Zombie gets the style of seventies horror, but he has no clue how to stage a scene - unless the scene calls for manic terror which, while effective in short bursts, leaves the viewer exhausted instead of terrified. Anderson and Aja both understand the necessity for quiet and pacing in building truly scary movies.

comment #16

LFF says ...

I think you guys are being awfully hard on Zombie. He's pretty clearly improved as a filmmaker each time out. The Halloween remake, while not a great movie, is much better than I anticpated, especially the first half which plays out like a bizarro world 70's afterschool special.

As far the whole, "no origin story for slashers", i've seen that movie 100 times. Even if it didn't really work, his Halloween was an attempt to do something different with it.

comment #17

/3rtfu11 says ...

Natasha Richardson has died.

comment #18

LFF says ...

...and after reading the article, i'm optimistic. Sounds to me like he's gotten comfortable with his process and is pursuing the element that I found the most interesting about the first one.

comment #19

hunterd says ...

I LOVED Devil's Rejects.

comment #20

BurmaShave says ...

I'm glad I'm not the first person to stick up for THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. If nothing else how can you slag on a film that uses Free Bird that well. And I'm guessing the people shit talking his music have never listened to it? Some of it sucks but the man wrote 'More Human Than Human' and 'Thunderkiss '65', two songs which have aged better than almost anything of their type from that era.

comment #21

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

"I'm curious -- what horror filmmaker putting out movies nowadays has better chops than Zombie?"

A fair question, and I'm not sure I have many answers.

I love Del Toro's and Amenabar's horror outings, but like many filmmakers, now that they are "known names" -- at least from a film buff perspective -- they seem to have forsaken the genre a bit.

Right now, the foreign guys are really where it's at -- Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Japan), Joon-ho Bong (Korea), Timur Bekmambetov (Russia -- although his Hollywood sellout process may have already begun in earnest), and of course Takeshi Miike -- even though it can be argued his films aren't really horror as much as a genre unto themselves.

I was impressed enough with Let the Right One In to automatically put Tomas Alfredson on my radar, although I haven't seen anything else by him. Ditto [Rec] -- remade here as the decent Quarantine. I swear that original Spanish film is the easily the best horror I have seen in the 00s -- and possibly one of the scariest ever.

As for horror filmmakers working in Hollywood, I'm just going to have to piggyback on what Ghost has posted about Roth and Aja, two of my favorites (and Mirrors is seriously underrated). I also thought The Ruins was great so I'm watching Carter Smith, but he had great source material to work from there. The Descent was stellar (one of the top horror films of the decade), but I have a feeling it was an anomaly -- Neil Marshall's other two films have seriously sucked.

I won't bother tainting my credibility by bringing up Carpenter or Craven (their best work in the genre is at least 20 years past), but you can always invoke the name of big-shot Hollywood directors who used to do great work in the genre before moving on.

I don't necessarily buy a lot of these positive SXSW reviews of Drag Me to Hell, but I guess I'll have to wait to see it before totally counting him out (it's been a loooong time since he's made a film solely intended to scare...I'm not even sure this is it). And then there's always Peter Jackson. Hey, with Cameron going back to his sci-fi genre roots, it's probably only a matter of time...

comment #22

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

Just to clarify things, I do think RZ is a very, very good music video director whose love for old-school (and i mean OLD!) horror has always shined through in his videos -- as well as his musical style and the audio clips imbedded in his albums.

It's just that I don't think that all of this has amounted to a feature film that has been greater than the sum of its (very loose) parts. Yet.

I still think this video for "Living Dead Girl" is probably his best work to date. Pitch-perfect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqHcD6tv2po

comment #23

hunterd says ...

Also, it's really weird that I love Devil's Rejects since I absolutely hate, Hate, HATE sexualized violence. I cannot stand it. And yet, TDR works for me in spite of the fact that it spends 25 minutes straight indulging in an elaborate rape fantasy.

comment #24

DeafBrownTrashPunk says ...

House of 1,000 Corpses was well done (haven't seen Devil's Rejects) but it was so painful to watch, because I don't like sexualized violence, either.

comment #25

Chase Kahn says ...

Please, 'The Devil's Rejects' was a pretentious, Last House on the Left-ish, worst use of 'Free Bird' ever, shitty horror film.

Neil Marshal's 'The Descent' is the only good modern horror film made in the last 10-15 years.

I don't doubt Rob Zombie's obsession and well-rounded knowledge of the horror genre, the guy probably knows more than I do (and I've seen his house on Cribs and it's a horror haven).

However, I have seen his films and they're dreadful. It only takes one viewing of 'Halloween' to realize what a hack this guy is.

comment #26

PastePotPete says ...

I had high hopes for Zombie after House of 1000 Corpses(not perfect but seemed fairly original at least) and all his talk about what he liked and disliked about horror. IE that sequels and remakes are bullshit.

Now he's four movies into his career, and two are sequels and one a remake. Hack.

comment #27

Ghost072 says ...

The Descent is an excellent horror film, but I have to agree that the jury is still out on Marshall based on the rest of his work. I am surprised I forgot to mention Kurosawa; Kairo has one of the scariest scenes in any modern horror film and the sense of dread in that film is absolute. The Japanese were definitely on a bit of a roll for a while there, with Ringu, Ju-On and Kairo, but much of their output quickly devolved into knock-offs of those films.

European filmmakers really seem to be picking up the slack with genre classics such as Calvaire, Haute Tension, Ils and Inside being some of the stand outs.

Also, The Signal was one of my favorite recent horror films. Genuinely horrifying and yet truly funny at times, it is a rare surprise in the "end of the world zombie apocalypse" genre.

comment #28

hunterd says ...

Also, David Lynch is the best horror filmmaker working today.