31

Here are a couple of things that must have gone through Rob Zombie's mind whilst shooting 31: "Who needs a plot when you got a psychopathic Nazi-midget?", "Who gives a damn about plausibility when you have Malcolm McDowell himself dressed up like a French Aristocrat and depicting a character that is named Father Murder?" and "Why would I make ambitious when the crowd simply wants sadistic & graphic violence?" And you know what? If Rob Zombie really was thinking these things, he was damn right! Personally, I'm an enormous fan of Zombie's "House of 1,000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects" and I remotely enjoyed his remake of "Halloween", even though the critics were quite harsh about it. But then he suddenly went psychedelic and experimental with "Halloween II" and "The Lords of Salem" and many fans – yours truly included – were disappointed. I, for one, was extremely happy to read that, with "31", Rob Zombie would return to the basics of crude and repulsive horror/shlock cinema! Because, after all, the revival of 70s grindhouse/drive-in exploitation cinema was largely the deed of Rob Zombie and not of Quentin Tarantino! So, "31" actually doesn't a have a real plot but is a mixture of homages to genre classics (for example "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre") and borrowed ideas of cult classics ("The Most Dangerous Game", "The Running Man"…)

A ramshackle old RV full of traveling circus artists/carnies is driving through the middle of redneck nowhere on Halloween's day 1976, and pretty much all they ever do is foul-mouthing and fornicating. When night falls, however, they notice the road is blocked with immense scarecrows. Before they properly realize what's going on, the RV and all its passengers are brutally attacked by mysterious creeps and three people are killed instantly. The remaining five survivors, two women and three men, awake tied up and chained in an abandoned factory where three elderly lunatics dressed up as French Aristocrats joyfully inform them that they are the players in this year's traditional game of 31. They are released in a dark and creepy labyrinth and have to survive for twelve hours while being chased by some of the most demented sickos ever caught on film, including a Spanish babbling Nazi-midget, clown siblings with chainsaws and deranged German sex deviants. The group defend themselves quite well, though, and thus the crazy tormentors bring in their ultimate secret weapon, the unbeatable master-psycho Doom-Head!

There isn't really too much to write about Rob Zombie's latest film, in fact. Either you're a fan of extreme and relentless violence and "31" is a must-see for you, or you'll completely detest the film for its lack of plot, character background, style or overall lack of taste. If even writer/director Zombie himself repeatedly stated that this is his most brutal movie to date, there isn't any reason to not believe him. "31" features numerous scenes in which people's heads are smashed in with a bludgeon, torsos are cut in half by chainsaws and throats are slit with rusty knives. Still, I can't help mentioning that most of this gruesome stuff also featured in "House of 1,000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects", but those two were suspenseful and haunting on top! "31" is sheer mindless horror entertainment but it won't leave a long-lasting impression. As usual, Rob Zombie surrounds himself with a cast that he worked well with before, including his own wife Sheri Moon, Meg Foster, Jeff Daniel Philips and many other familiar faces. The soundtrack is terrific as well, which is another Rob Zombie trademark, and features for example the beautiful song "California Dreaming" during a rare quiet and peaceful scene.

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.

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.

I had no anticipation or information about this movie going in... except for it being a Rob Zombie movie and my enjoyment of all his other movies so far. None of them are perfect but none of them are boring, all of them bring something interesting to the table. Not so much with 31 though... One thing I've generally liked with Zombie's movies is that, unlike a lot of horror films such as Hostel - which promise all sorts of transgressive horrors only to bait and switch with some relatively tame eyeball gouging, Zombie's movies generally follow through on their threats. I never feel safe in his movies (except I'm pretty sure Mrs. Zombie's characters will survive to the final frame). Unfortunately, 31 let all the air out of that balloon dog for me. It didn't ever come close to crossing any lines of standardized horror. Oh sure, Its clown's show up and promise all sorts of vile entertainments... but they never materialize. Instead, we get some badly filmed fight scenes and routine kills that could be out of any war/crime/fantasy film. There's little or no suspense, barely any atmosphere outside of the clowns' initial entrances and Malcolm McDowall's nonsensical prattling. The movie takes its time building up 'Doomhead' but what is he but another loudmouthed guy in a clown suit? I assume he'd go down just as easily to a well-aimed blow to the head. There's really nothing special about him except for the amount of time he gets on screen. He even does the loathsome 'golf clap' routine that should be forever banished to Cliché-land. When the clowns do get their hands on someone they're not likely do do anything surprising at all... just stab them and move on. Unless something nastier was edited out of the version I saw... which I kinda doubt.

The carnies themselves had the potential for being the sort of interesting protagonists I'd pull for... and I DID like that they weren't just a bunch of squealing teenagers (Meg Foster especially was fascinating to look at. Older women like her are so seldom allowed on screen in heroic roles). But they're mostly reduced to just goofing around and swearing at each other... maybe it was just bad improv because the writer couldn't think of what to do with them?

This is BY FAR the least interesting thing I've seen come from Mr. Zombie. I'm still a fan of his previous films, I'll still watch whatever he makes next... but this one is the bottom dweller. Not that it's such a bad generic horror movie, as just that alone it's fairly average... but it's certainly a bad Rob Zombie horror movie. And being that, it's pretty disappointing.

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.