31

I dig Rob Zombie films. Devils Rejects, the Halloween reboots, Lords of Salem…all personal favorites. So much so that I contributed $150 to the crowd funding of 31. It was promised to be the movie RZ wanted to make as well as the movie he thought his fans wanted to see - an unapologetic and uncompromising slaughter-fest. Well, I finally watched 31 last night and unfortunately it does compromise and it isn't even much of a slaughter-fest. It's simply another "we-kidnapped-some-innocent-people-for-the-purpose-of-torturing-them" retread. And not a very good one at that. I'm bummed.

There are certainly moments that make 31 worth watching. But those moments just aren't enough to make it a good movie. Much of the criticism of 31 has been directed at the lack of character development. My comment to that is "who cares?". This is a movie where I wanted to sink into my seat and cover my eyes due to the extreme and unrelenting gore. I wanted to feel like I did when I first saw Dawn of The Dead in theaters in 1980 - unable to look, but unable to look away…utterly horrified by images I'd never seen before…walking out exhilarated, out of breath, and laughing at myself for being so freaked out by a movie. If anyone could do it, Rob could.

Alas, most of 31 is just another quick-cut, shaky-cam exercise that does manage to force the viewer to look away - just not out of disgust, but to keep from getting a headache from the excessively annoying hand-held shots and machine-gun editing. More often than not, you can't even tell what's going on in the action scenes. There are lots of half second images of blood- soaked faces, and blood-soaked clothing, and blood-soaked weapons…but we can't tell who's getting chopped up and who's doing the chopping.

31 opens with a monologue from villainous clown Doom Head. It's a great scene that draws you in. The idea that he was, of course, going to show up again by the end of the film was the only thing that kept me from walking out. He does show up in the final 15 minutes, but it's too little, too late. It was already to the point where I couldn't care less what happened to these people and I knew however the inevitable deaths were played out wasn't going to be anything interesting or inventive. I was right. In between the opening and closing Doom Head bookends there is absolutely nothing of interest. A little unsuccessful character development…silly villains that are far too easy for our heroes to kill…pompous ringmasters that add nothing and could have been cut out completely…it all made me want my $150 back.

I assume there will be an unrated version somewhere down the line that I'll watch and re- evaluate, but I can't imagine it saving this waste of fake blood and Malcolm McDowells talent. If you want to see an interesting, scary clown movie try 2014's Clown (he eats children!) …if you want gut-wrenching gore watch the Evil Dead remake again. The only reason to see 31 is it's an RZ flick and to be properly schooled in modern horror you need to see all RZ offerings - at least for now. A few more throwaways like this and Rob will just be another straight to Netflix hack director.

I'll start by saying this, I know there are some that will claim "He wasn't going for a traditional scary movie. People that don't like it just don't understand his perspective." I'm sure that in all of the conversations they had with Mr. Zombie these points were covered and clearly they have a much better understanding than anyone else. This review is for those that have been excited about seeing this because Rob Zombie's pieces in the past have had that intense shock factor and were delivered very well. Unfortunately, this one does not. It is kind of sadistic and if you put yourself in the position of one of these actors you can imagine it would probably be terrifying. Then again, you wouldn't use poorly scripted cheesy lines and engage in badly choreographed fights. Personally, I have been looking forward to this film since I first heard about it last year and have kept myself up on the release date so as soon as it was available I could treat myself to it. I couldn't have been more disappointed. I thoroughly enjoyed his other films and would watch another if he made it. I realize fanatic Zombie lovers will disagree with me when I say this but for every one that like it there will be several that don't. I can't decide which was worse: the ending or the overall acting. I must give credit where credit is due, the intro is entertaining and you will probably enjoy Doom Head (the guy in the opening scene). Again unfortunately, he is in the movie all of about 10 minutes non-consecutively. Had the movie centered around him and a twisted hunting obsession perhaps I would be writing a very different review. The acting is over-the-top and awful. Not in the same way that some movies are so bad they're good (like Zombeavers or Axe Giant) but more like super low budget projects filmed on an iPhone. For a movie that has reasonably good quality in most scenes I was so let down to see the acting was so unrefined. It probably could have been worse, I'm just not sure how.

As so many others, I too was excited about "31" and could not wait to finally watch it. Maybe it was that high expectations, that was part of my disappointment, but I am not willed to explain everything that was wrong in the movie with that premise.

I have to say, before I write about the movie itself, that I never shared the opinion of those, who see Rob Zombie basically as the horror messiah, who will reinvent the genre. He basically had 2 good movies (Devil's Rejects, Halloween), all other movies were pretty bad. House of 1000 Corpses was a ridiculously bad B-movie, Halloween 2 was bad even for a film school student, and those few parts that were good in Lords of Salem were copied from other movies. First Halloween reboot was only good, because he had a rich franchise with tons of information to build on.

He gets the look every time, I'll give him that, and I won't even make fun about how a grown up man calls himself "Zombie", but the content of his movies is a major letdown every single time. I'd never thought to say this, but in terms of innovative horror movies, I prefer Eli Roth before Zombie every day.

Rob is an awesome musician, and yes, maybe even a good director. But he is an horrible screenplay writer with no idea how to develop characters and dialogues. No wonder, all characters in "31" are superficial clichés with no debt, talking horrible stupid stuff, that is meant to sound smart. The "Doomhead" being so obviously being a Heath Ledger's Joker tribute just confirms that. Basically the most interesting character in the movie is a (bad) rip-off. And did he really need the slo-mo clap? That was so bad, I was close to turn off the TV.

Also,he really should stop to cast his wife for every female lead. If not married to him, she would never have become an actress, at least not in a main role. I don't care if she is hot (I by the way don't think so, she is SO skinny and looks old for her age), I care about acting skills.

Maybe, if Rob could direct a movie with a screenplay written by an experienced and talented writer...? But this way, letting him do whatever he wants, we get movies like "31".

So, the protagonists get abducted and sent into an Arena, to fight to death with some clowns with freaky names (Doomhead, Deathhead, Bashhead, and so on...). That's pretty much all, no more exposition or plot details. Why? No idea, and the movie does not care about explaining anything - being sick is basically it's only excuse and motivation. "Why do they do this?" "Because they have sick minds". "Aha. And why does Doomhead what he does? Does he get paid BIG time?" "Ah, he is sich minded". "What is special about Doomhead at all? To me does not look any more dangerous than the rest of the freaks?" "Ah, he is even sicker as them". And so on. A few freaky characters get shown, some people die, mainly by blade weapons, until an, in my opinion, pretty stupid ending.

Okay, there is some gore in the movie, which I appreciated. I did like the characters, even if superficial - but this made the movie even worse, because you are interested - but don't get any answers or backgrounds.

I also liked the Soundtrack a lot, I love all this 60s and 70s music, and it blended in nicely.

But the overall execution was just bad - ridiculous fighting choreographies, that gave me the impression, everything in this movie was filmed by first take (maybe they wanted to proudly say that they shot the movie in 31 days or something like this), especially the text passages of Sheri Moon Zombies. Man, stop letting her talk - no expression, no motivation, no acting. At all.

So, what can I say? I give 4/10, 4 points for having interesting characters (who never get developed in any way), a good soundtrack, some gore and a good colour correction).

But can I recommend this? Gosh, no, I cannot.

I have still hope for Rob Zombie, and I will see his next movie. But if this will be bad again, I am out of the Zombie business, because by then he will have delivered 3 bad movies in a row - in my world more than enough to lose my respect permanently.

Sorry, Zombie fans - I know you have another opinion and will probably flame me, but this is my personal view. In my eyes, "31" is a disappointing letdown. There could have been so much more, this could have been such a good movie. But for that another director or at least screenplay writer would have been necessary.

Maybe next time.

to be expected from Rob Zombie, not the best dialogue in the world, unlikable protagonists you want to die, Sheri moon zombie trying and the feeling of wishing he would get to the point. i loved 'House of 1000 corpses' & 'Devil's rejects' is one of my favorite horror films of all time. The only other of Zombie's films that even touches on those films in my opinion is 'Halloween' with the plot of killer clowns playing a totally crazy game of cat and mouse i thought such a simple story arc would be fun and playful horror, But Zombie tries something that i felt just fell flat on it's face. Almost cringy to watch at times, Nazi Clown midgets, c'Mon man... Still a strong director but a terrible writer. This film should be used as evidence to Zombie that he cannot carry a film on his own, if he hired a couple of writers to spoon feed him decent characters for his 'plot' then you could potentially get some decent horror movies. or at least seem satisfying dialogue. or maybe he should just stick to making the antagonist the main point of view, that way the script makes sense. over all, was looking forward to a night of madness , in stead got a student film on crack shot in a sweatshop.

31 (2016)

* (out of 4)

A group of carnival workers are on their way to a job when they are kidnapped by psychotic clowns. Once chained up in a building, Father Murder (Malcolm McDowell) informs them that they're going to play a game, which will last twelve hours. They can either survive or face the worst death possible from his killer clowns.

Rob Zombie's 31 is a film that he's highly been promoting and this includes before it was even made. There was a teaser poster released and fans helped get the movie made but the plot of the film was kept secret and it's easy to see why because there's not much of one. Sadly, what we've basically got is SAW but with the redneck/white trash types that we've seen in every Zombie movie up to this point. Sadly this here turns out to be the director's worst film.

31 has all sorts of problems with it and a majority of them are the same issues I've had with his previous movies. For starters, the characters are all just annoying to the point where you don't really care whether they live or die. I'm not sure why it's so hard for their to be a likable character in one of Zombie's films but if you don't have anyone to root for what's the point? Well, I guess it could be one of those movies where you root for the villains but that's impossible here too because the villains are all boring and just not that interesting. Heck, they're not even "clowns" but just the typical rednecks but with face paint.

Another problem that I had with this film is that it's simply not scary. As was the case in THE LORDS OF SALEM, Zombie tries to build up tension and suspense but it just fails. There's just nothing here that draws you into the story and when you're watching a film like this and there's no tension it just leads to pure boredom. Even worse is some of the lighting because there are times where you can't see what's going on and other times when lights are flashing at the camera and whatever effect they were going for just doesn't work.

Zombie promised that this here would be his most violent movie and I don't think that was the case either. A lot of the violence is off screen or just not nearly as brutal as he has delivered in the past. The performances are pretty much what they are with everyone doing a decent enough of a job. The music selection is good and I will say that there was one good sequence inside a cage with a chainsaw. Still, there's just no way around it but Zombie just isn't impressing me as a director. 31 could have been done countless other ways and any of them would have been better than what we got.