Writer: Rob Zombie
In this new movie, Rob Zombie (temporarily?) abandons his favorite subject (serial killers) and goes boldly into the uncharted (for him, at least) territory of supernatural horror. Just a few quick introductory words before we get into this movie: First of all, I don't consider Zombie a second coming in the horror genre or something. House of 1000 Corpses was a guilty pleasure, The Devil's Rejects was almost great until that stupid crappy ending ruined everything and Halloween was a piece of crap. I haven't even bothered to watch the sequel. However, one has to admit that he's not a completely talentless filmmaker and his films generally look good - it's quite refreshing when you see something that reminds you of a B-movie from the eighties, instead of some repulsive garbage made by a couple of teenagers with a $500 camcorder. In short - with all his flaws, Zombie is one of the people that stand out in today's less than impressive genre output.
Now, as I said, The Lords of Salem is Zombie's attempt to do something slightly different than usual. Instead of serial killers, we have Satanism, witches (real ones, unfortunately without brooms and pointy hats), disturbing visions, disturbing "music" causing disturbing events, black magic, et cetera. The plot couldn't be simpler - Heidi (played by Zombie's wife and his regular cast member Sheri Moon) is a radio DJ at a station is Salem (as we know from our history lesson, it's where all those witches were burned). She has some stupid show which she runs with two uninteresting friends and they interview people and stuff and everything's good until one day they receive a mysterious record by an unknown group called Lords of Salem (you might remember them from the title). They play it in the show and it's just some simple (but extremely disturbing) theme repeating over and over again. I can't exactly name the style since it's not the music I listen, could be industrial or something. From the moment the record is played in the show, Heidi starts having disturbing visions and it turns out that the record is somehow related to a centuries old curse that some of the witches put on some witch hunter who burned them for being witches.
This is not half bad a story, but Zombie is not very interested in plot development - his primary goal here is to abuse the opportunity to create, through Heidi's visions, some quite memorable moments of genuine wtfness which may not make much sense, but hey! - they're quit memorable. The Lords of Salem is completely and totally style-over-substance (or even style-without-substance), which can be seen as a (temporary?) return to the House of 1000 Corpses days, but Lords are much more extreme in this regard. I won't even try to describe the many visions that constitute the core of the movie - suffice it to say that Zombie freely draws influence from people like Ken Russell, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, maybe even Takashi Miike and some other even more extreme maniacs like Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura. If you like those filmmakers, you'll probably enjoy this insanity fest, if you can survive the slow beginning. The Lords of Salem is more of an extremely extended death metal music video than a movie, but I'm definitely not complaining. If you want movies to make sense, watch some family drama or something.
As usual, writing is Zombie's weaker point and the few scenes where the plot does "develop" are cheesy and unconvincing, but fortunately those are always quickly substituted with some hideous monster or someone getting their throat slit and everything's right again. Another very important thing - Sheri Moon gets naked! Finally! If you're still not convinced that this is Zombie's best work to date, you're hopeless.
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