The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie) [30 points / 3 votes]
"Here’s a film that proves that all recovery movies aren't necessarily the same. It’s entirely possible to accept Robert Zombie’s masterpiece at its ghoulish face value as the inevitable fulfillment of a curse sworn hundreds of years before, satanic panic come home to roost in the very crotch of American Puritanism, but there’s just as much evidence that the demonic forces involved are an incarnation of the relentless tenacity of addiction (see also Jason Banker's haunting and bleak Toad Road).
The monkey on the back of Sheri Moon Zombie’s Heidi LaRoc (a/k/a Adelheid Elizabeth Hawthorne, rejector of patrician custom and mores), driving her headlong into the abyss, is either an ancient plan of infernal vengeance set forth by a cult slaughtered by an overzealous witchfinder, or a recursive inability to get out from under a crack habit; either way, you lose. It’s as schematic as the cruelest of Haneke/Von Trier scenarios, but there’s so much more here - a leap beyond the sleazy rednecks, roadhouses splattered red, and grungy shocks that lurked around every corner in Zombie’s previous works. It has the sensibility of a Hammer classic but with the sense of geographic terror that Kubrick excelled at and the Russellian freakout as well. But the voice at the center is distinctively Zombie's - and it aches.
Zombie’s vision of Salem is something unusual. Restrained. Quiet. And suffused with a grandeur and power that, while occasionally surfacing in House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, and both Halloween films, never quite sustained feature length. The Salem witch trials are, by this point, an example of how history takes something unspeakable and metabolizes it into something kitsch, a flippant dismissal. 2012’s ParaNorman did a great job of stripping away the camp and novelties and forcing the viewer to confront some of our national legacy of guilt on the subject. But here, a different tack is chosen, and that film’s national indictment becomes something much more personal.
The literal aspects of the Hawthorne curse just get muddled about (laid out more clearly but less effectively in Zombie’s novel, written with S.K. Epperson, which has a completely different ending and a much more expansive portrait of the workings of the curse), but that's okay - dream logic can be its own justification. The mark of a truly great horror film is if you would be willing to spend time within it, knowing full well its particular horrors. The Lords of Salem is a lush blanket, so comfortable and inviting you never notice its slow, inexorable tightening into a noose.
For much of the year, it was battling with Stories We Tell for the film that I couldn’t escape from. Then, after seeing Her, there was another contender for defining the zenith of cinema circa 2013. But Theodore and Samantha’s relationship, while hitting incredibly close to home, doesn’t quite have the devastating crunch of what could have been but was never meant to be with Heidi and Whitey (Jeffrey Daniel Phillips). You hurt for Heidi, and you hurt for Whitey because of how much he loves her. It's not a geek crush or an establishing love to chart Whitey's path into adult relationships or Heidi's path out of addiction. These are adults who've seen how life is and the shit that it so often brings.
Whitey loves Heidi with the strength of someone who's seen how bad it can get and still wants to take that chance. And what Heidi feels for Whitey is complex; there are no manic pixie dreams to be found here, just a concern, devotion, and sense of fun that feels real - the realest concept in the film’s exquisite blend of horrors. Someone you make waffles for and listen to music with in the middle of the night... well, that’s someone very dear to you. Multiple viewings untie some knots, while binding other strands together; it’s a flawed gem that nonetheless demands to be held dearly. I will oblige.
Also, between this, Short Term 12, and A Madea Christmas, 2013 really was the year of the genuinely caring beardy dude. Here, here..." -- Jason Shawhan
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