Rob Zombie
31

It's clear how films like this inevitably and naturally attract criticism. After all, can a critic possibly appreciate this work? But who cares about the critics.

Many regular enthusiasts also turn up their noses, wanting to analyze this or that aspect. There's no doubt that Zombie is someone who goes his own way, and in turn, doesn't care whether he pleases or not. For a horror director, there couldn't be a better trait.

However controversial, Zombie is undoubtedly the most anticipated and talked-about horror director of the last decade. In a genre often stale and trapped by its own styles and clichés, a character like the former White Zombie leader has been a gift, a breath of fresh air since the days of House of 1000 Corpses, which, while blatantly looting/paying homage to the '70s, Hooper being the primary figure, splendidly renewed the genre in the postmodern age, under the banner of fun and the purest love for the classics.

After several other films, with ups and downs, Zombie's taste for anarchy and massacre returns more extreme than ever for this latest 31, a project financed through online crowdfunding and released three years after Lords of Salem.

In short, 31 is everything that, personally, I could have wanted from Zombie at this moment. Rob himself has compared it to Devil's Rejects, and indeed, if the former was more of a visionary work (partly actually suggestive, but partly unsuccessful and irritating) and in some ways cryptic, here he returns to his old and greatest passions: Halloween, clowns, the '70s, the road, southern gothic, the hunt, the game of massacre.

He no longer cares much for the ambitions of the previous, leaves aside the "high" citations (where references to Kubrick, Polanski, Argento's glorious past were abundant...), and in 100 minutes, amidst many more or less entertaining bullshits, he leaves no breath for the audience and the blood flows in liters.

A visceral horror, flesh and blood, over the top and baroque, which has already been more castigated than appreciated, as I mentioned at the beginning. Yet with a visual charm that I personally can't help but feel.

So there's little to elaborate on, many see it as a step back, but it's the Zombie I like to see.

Always a pleasure, then, to see Malcolm McDowell again. It's just a pity that Sheri Moon's legendary behind is less explicitly paid homage to than in the past.

Otherwise, happy Halloween.