Less inferno than slow burn, Rob Zombie?s retro witch thriller The Lords of Salem has plenty of portent but not much payoff. Likely to disappoint die-hard fans of The Devil?s Rejects�and other Zombie atrocities, this milder brew still has ?70s-esque style to spare and sports a likable lead perf by Sheri Moon Zombie as a DJ seemingly spun by Satan?s spawn into the lower depths. Theatrical play will pale beside the pic?s ancillary afterlife, although ?Lords? isn?t potent enough to rule in either realm.
With torture porn having been snuffed out many moons ago, Zombie hasn?t picked a bad time to tone himself down. Still, as even PG-rated horror has a duty to deliver on some level, the helmer?s narrative dead end here registers not as a lack of nerve so much as a lack of imagination.
Following a tongue-in-cheek prologue set in the late 1600s and showing a witches? coven getting burned to a crisp, we arrive in the present day, which for Zombie looks and sounds a helluva lot like 1974. Recovering addict Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie in blond dreadlocks), who lives in a rundown Boston apartment, and co-host of the latenight ?Salem Rocks? show, thinks she sees someone or something moving around the unrented unit down the hall. Then at work, she gets an ancient-looking vinyl platter from a band called the Lords that freaks her out even more.
Full of cacophonous bow-sawing and mumbled incantations, this patently avant-garde long-player goes out over the airwaves and puts even listeners at home in a trance. Several scares later and poor Heidi is back on the crackpipe, making it tough for the viewer to tell whether her subsequent visions of the damned are drug-induced or directed by a force even…
Diane Kruger Dido Diora Baird Dita Von Teese Dominique Swain Donna Feldman Drea de Matteo Drew Barrymore
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