Film Review: The Devil's Rejects

"don't fancy yours much..."

The Devil’s Rejects (18)
Dir. Rob Zombie

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

You want to be "cold-slabbed, toe-tagged, and mailed to your mom in a plastic bag?" well The Devil’s Rejects are the people to call… These hillbilly redneck stone cold killers are the sickest of the sick, the scum of the earth, mucho freakos - so far removed from reality that they make The Dukes of Hazzard look like having a wide gene pool.
Let’s get one thing straight from the start… The Devil’s Rejects is not a pleasant film, it’s not even a horror film in the traditional sense of a ‘boogeyman / monster’ – this film is a balls to the wall celebration of all things sadistic, nasty and grim, so don’t wander into this unless you
a. have a high tolerance for on screen violence
and b. have a high tolerance for on screen violence…

The thing is, a movie like this can only really be endured by ‘normal people’ if you completely distance yourself from the material – after all, you’re hopefully not likely to see scenes of torture, wanton humiliation and downright sadistic murder in your average day to day life… So any ‘appreciation’ of The Devil’s Rejects should be based on seeing it as a very dark satire of modern culture and the ‘disposable nature of existence’... Nah, who am I kidding? This is debauched titillation presented entirely from the killers ‘side’ – director Zombie obviously loves his sick creations and he presents the main protagonists = The Firefly Family, first seen in ‘House of 1,000 Corpses’ *which is kind of a prequel to this as just solid folks who have chosen killing and torturing innocent victims as their ‘alternative hobby’…

So – you need to be warned that this is hard core gore, laced with extreme violence and nastiness for no apparent reason but if that’s what you want then – this is possibly the best example of a grindhouse roadmovie ever and yes it delivers a certain visceral thrill but at the cost of ever moral in your body!!

Darkmatt Rating: ööö (sick but slick)

Reviews of other films and stuff you might want to read indexed here