‘The Devil’s Rejects’ at 20: Rob Zombie’s Divisive Film is His Most Crucial
From metal musician to genre film icon, Rob Zombie’s influence on horror cinema stretches as far as his discography. His distinctive, gritty visual style is a unique blend of classic slasher films and 1970s exploitation, bringing a level of gratuity and darkness to the subgenre many hadn’t previously come to expect. Campy dialogues, over-the-top violence, and horror heavyweights revived from the 70s and 80s characterise his style, all packed in a green-tinged hue right at home in the 00s “torture porn” era.
Zombie’s films have often been written off simply as vehicles to showcase the most gnarly kills possible, from the bloody opening scene of his 2007 Halloween remake to the witch burning of Lords of Salem and Jerry’s long overdue appointment with Dr Satan in House of 1000 Corpses. The Devil’s Rejects, released in 2005, was the second installment in the Firefly Trilogy, sandwiched between House of 1000 Corpses and 3 From Hell. The grisly, graphic violence at the time of its release caused controversy among cinemagoers, and even 20 years on, it still garners comments that it is “violent and depraved just for the sake of being violent and depraved” and “irredeemable trash, plain and simple.”
Far from being a bloody display of Zombie’s practical effects chops and gnarly imagination that was forgotten as quickly as it caused uproar, The Devil’s Rejects became one of the most crucial films of his career while offering a stark look at the nature of evil, fear of the other in a post 9/11 society, and the consequences of unchecked violence.
Following the events of the first film, the rural home of the psychotic Firefly family is raided by police. Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) manage to flee the scene, reuniting with Baby’s father, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), at a remote desert motel. As the trio torture their way through a fresh set of victims, the vengeful Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe) is hot on their trail. The Devil’s Rejects challenges the traditional binary of good and evil in various ways, most prominently, having us follow the Firefly family as protagonists throughout the film, aligning the audience with their cruelty and ruthless methods of killing and raping their victims.
When a family band is unlucky enough to come across them, they are horrifically murdered while Otis gives a speech proclaiming himself to be the Devil, “here to do the Devil’s work.” However, the police in the film’s world, who in many movies would be portrayed as saviours against the tyrannical Firefly family, are also seen as flawed and corrupt. Sheriff Wydell’s brother was a victim of the Fireflys, with Wydell’s desire for vengeance clouding his judgment and leading him to become increasingly violent and ruthless, not unlike the Fireflys themselves.
He hires amoral bounty hunters to track down the Fireflys, and stabs Mother Firefly to death when he learns she was the one who killed his brother. Through Wydell and law enforcement, as well as aligning viewers with the Fireflies as protagonists in The Devil’s Rejects, Zombie explores the idea that power can corrupt and that the binary of good and evil is far more of a gray area.
From beating Roy (Geoffrey Lewis) to death with a branch, to Baby’s knife throw at Gloria (Priscilla Barnes) and the explosive final stand off, barbarity in The Devil’s Rejects works hand-in-hand with Zombie’s musings on good and evil to examine the impact of unchecked violence, particularly at the hands of law enforcement. In 2006, the rate of violent crime in the US increased by 1.9% compared to previous years, according to The New York Times, with the number of murders increasing at a similar rate. Under George W. Bush’s presidency from 2001 to 2009, it is notable that the overall crime rate decreased, but at the same time, crime-related legislation such as the Patriot Act led some to believe the potential for police abuse and brutality has increased due to more powers given to forces.
The distrust this breeds in law enforcement can be seen in The Devil’s Rejects when Wydell captures the Fireflys and tortures them, burning a house down with them inside but letting Baby loose to hunt for sport. He doesn’t simply want to take the Fireflys’ lives for killing his brother; he wants them to suffer and takes pleasure in their pain, no matter what he has to do in the process and who must get hurt for him to experience it. The Firefly family, meanwhile, can be seen to represent an entirely different yet similarly terrifying facet of brutality in society.
Through the Firefly Trilogy, we see that the family does not kill for any reason—not revenge like Wydell, not to rob the bodies and make their riches, nor for a “divine” purpose to spiritual ends. The Fireflys kill because they can, and that is more chilling than any other reason. Despite killing to enact his revenge, it does not come as easily to Wydell as it does to his targets, who kill spontaneously and without any remorse. The film is set in the year 1978, the year in which three of America’s most notorious serial killers—Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and David Berkowitz—were captured. It can be argued that the Fireflys are representative of killers such as these, everyday people that are capable of ending lives at a moment’s notice, causing widespread panic and devastation.
The gratuity of the violence within The Devil’s Rejects, both from Wydell and the Fireflys, reflects the state of media coverage in the 2000s—and even now—which beamed the most horrifying, grotesquely detailed images of death an war into our sitting rooms while the family gathered for dinner, normalizing the graphic violence that was once so shocking on screen.
The Devil’s Rejects was made in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, following which the Bush administration declared war and invaded countries seen to have aided in attacks on the US. Americans found themselves in a society paranoid about “the outsider” while bombarded by neo-conservativism and patriotism, trying to bring back a sense of “togetherness.” The violence and commentary on good and evil also lean into this, highlighting the complexity of the conflict that surrounded 9/11 in the morally gray characters we follow. Though Corpses was released post-9/11, it was made prior, and The Devil’s Rejects is notably bleaker than its predecessor, and its violence is seen with crystal clear clarity, with none of the grain of Corpses to blur its atrocities.
The Firefly family is emblematic of the societal anger palpable through many following the 9/11 attacks, while their actions can be seen to represent the widespread horror and tragedy that sent shockwaves through not only the US but the world. The Fireflys, who live outside of society, show the unease and fear felt toward those deemed different in a post-9/11 society. Even the film’s title, The Devil’s Rejects, embodies societal rejection. Through the Fireflys and Wydell, we can see a metaphor for America grappling with the notion of bloodlust in the wake of a terrorist attack on its own soil, and the horrific images that followed as soldiers and civilians alike were tortured and killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of the “War on Terror.”
While Corpses is arguably what established Zombie as a filmmaker, The Devil’s Rejects and its shocking, gory content is what propelled him into the mainstream. Much like real life, in the world of the Fireflys, horrifying and tragic events occur, and the audience gets no real understanding of why they happened, or any catharsis after the fact. The relentless assault of vicious torture and death scenes caused uproar at the time of the film’s release and still proves to be divisive. Yet they are emblematic of the horrors broadcast on global news stations every day, while The Devil’s Rejects tackles themes still as prescient today as they were at the time of its release.
Today, we see reports of children massacred in Gaza and bombs dropped on civilians in Ukraine while the Western world watches on. The film’s bleak commentary on violence and fearing the other remains pointed 20 years after its release, highlighting the traumas of war and the normalization of brutality in our media. Far from just a shocking slasher, The Devil’s Rejects is a timely exploration of the nature of violence and morality that has stood the test of time for two decades, and is sure to continue for many years to come.
Categorized: Editorials
