Horror on the Run: The Devil's Rejects

A film that I had the joy of revisiting is Rob Zombie's brilliant The Devil's Rejects (2005). The film has not disappointed me one bit, instead, has gotten better with each viewing over the last four years. Zombie, in my opinion, is the best director to come along in the horror/suspense genre in the last twenty years. I will not shy away from putting him up there with the likes of Romero, Raimi, Roth, Barker, and Cronenberg. TDR, for me, is the perfect blend of story telling with the suspense, horror, and terror. The film, visually, has an uniquely beautiful aspect without turning into a caricature.
The Devil's Rejects is Rob Zombie's follow-up to his brilliant 2003 House of a 1000 Corpses which cemented his place as the next best thing in horror. TDR built on the cult success of House and took us to an even higher place in Zombie's sadistic director's mind. What makes the film a unique experience is the dialogue that has such a biting vitriolic overtone, but given the characters of the film makes perfect sense. Mind you, these are not your parent's sociopathic clan.
The first half-hour of the film is one of the most intense that I have ever experience in a film. Most films that I have seen over the last few years has lacked this in the entire duration of the respected films. TDR opens up, timewise, where House left off. We get an open narrative, similiar to Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), about the discovery of the Firefly family's deeds. The film then moves to the police pulling up to the house where they hope to catch the Firefly family offguard. The two central characters escape and that's where the story takes off from there. We get a beautiful montage set to The Allman Brothers Midnight Rider.
We then get introduced by some secondary characters and a familiar character in Captain Spaulding played by Sid Haig. The secondary characters are played by a who's who in B-movies which is ironic considering that Zombie admits that he did not cast the film with these actors pedigree. Some of the actors appearing are: Ken Foree, Michael Berryman, Geoffery Lewis, Kate Norby, and P.J. Soles to name a few.
What made this TDR special was that Zombie turned the Firefly clan from antagonists in House to protagonist in TDR. In fact, the Fireflys start the film as antagonist, but we get a sense of empathy for the Firefly clan toward the end of the film. The audience has some sympathy and we even root for these people to overcome their "situation." As in the beginning of the film, we are given a great end set to the song Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Devil's Rejects is a film that I will watch over and over for a very long time and think about for a very long time.