THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (REVIEW)
Dir. Rob Zombie
Reviewer. Martyn Wakefield
Continuing where HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES left off, ‘…Rejects’ opens with a bang, a police raid on the Firefly family’s home sees the vengeful brother of deceased cop Wydell who met his grissly end in part one, chasing down those responsible and looking for more than a cell to put them in. The hunters have now become the hunted in a turn of events that sees the bad guys turn sympathy seeking and the good guys turn sinister.
The returning cast (minus Karen Black (RIP) who is replaced by Leslie Easterbrook as Mother Firefly) change tone as with the style. Gone are the haberdashery cut scenes and in comes a full blown, big budgeted family drama that proves to be more brutal, more realistic and more in your face shocking than you could ever imagine from ...CORPSES.
The humour is reduced to mere quips as the tension between cat and mouse gets tighter. William Forsythe as the penetrating and dark Sheriff Wydell removes any line between good and evil as his quest to seek justice for the death of his brother turns into a nemesis to reckon with for the Firefly family.
Zombie manages to strip any recollection of its predecessor but story as this realistically shot portrayal of senseless violence and the breakdown of a family that have been in their comfort of sadistic murder for years comes to a dramatic end. The song ‘Freebird’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd has never been the same since and never have tears flowed for a film that sees face transplants, necrophilia and enough gore to keep a butcher happy. ‘Titanic’ can eat it’s heart out.
This may be a sequel but Zombie has proved that a sequel needn’t be a reimaging or the same all over again like many other franchises’. While cutting the franchise short all but for a mini comic and additions to his animated feature THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO, The Firefly family will be forever remembered for their adventures in two completely different films that play opposite yet fit so firmly together.
(ed - 3 FROM HELL finally arrived in 2018 but my did it disappoint)
