Rob Zombie’s 31 refers to the day that Halloween is on. It’s possible that this a cheeky reference to Zombie’s time as director of the Halloween movies. In the movie’s universe, it’s the title of a game. Malcolm McDowell plays a character reminiscent of Marvel’s Arcade alongside two actors who seem to be trying to outdo each other in channeling Judi Dench. They dress up in Regency cosplay, and like the similarly dressed villains of The Hunger Games they force a gaggle of victims to engage in survival combat. We follow five competitors (including Sheri Moon Zombie and Jeff Daniel Phillips, returning from The Lords of Salem) from a touring show who get waylaid when their van is blocked by scarecrows set in the middle of the road. They are informed that they have 12 hours to survive a house of horrors with each challenge more terrifying than before.
Five competitors. Twelve hours. Three masterminds that we can see. And the odds of survival are announced in multiples of ten. So why is this game called “31”? That mystery is never explained. Also, our survivors running from clowns with names like Sex-Head and Doom-Head because this is a Rob Zombie movie.
A movie with so many colorful elements would normally point to a gonzo horror story full of blood and mayhem. Even if it was bad, surely it would be entertaining, right? Sadly, out of the mirror movies I’ve watched lately this one had me going for a time check more than anything else I’d watched. Shoot, there’s a pipe vs. chainsaw battle in this movie and I couldn’t manage more than a yawn. (And this movie wants to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 so badly.)
Director Rob Zombie had partially crowd-funded this movie. (How much? The total budget was $1.5 million. Also I suspect some of the backers thought that they were kicking in money for a sequel to The Devil’s Rejects). If I had been one of the patrons, I’d demand my money back. When your villains are clowns, expectations are high that you will be treated to one of my favorite horror movie settings: a colorful carnival funhouse. That stuff must cost money, though. The movies takes place at an abandoned warehouse that 70% of the time looks like a darkened soundstage. I guess there’s a style about it — even if it feels like a Bioshock knock-off. (There’s a point in the movie where the villain tells our survivors that the door is unlocked and they’re free to roam around the premises, and it comes off like our heroes had just unlocked open-world mode.)
I would have welcomed a funhouse setting, though, because 31 is unpleasant to watch. Not for the gore, necessarily, though there is plenty of it. Zombie’s film style is for quick cuts and extreme close-ups. This gets extremely nauseating during the action sequences. I had no idea what was going on. Who was getting stabbed? Who has the upper hand? It’s impossible to tell when half the time we’re zoomed in on Sherri Moon Zombie’s face.
Then there’s the cringe-worthy dialogue. I think it’s intentional that these clowns aren’t particularly funny. Look, I am a clown by trade, and I do also enjoy me a decent horror clown. But they have to respect the craft, dammit! Though maybe they were leaning less toward “frolicking funsters of the Midway” and more toward “middle-aged juggalos.” They drop eye-rolling zingers like “Count yourselves lucky you got f***ed by the best!” with the conviction of a edgelord teenager who thinks they got away with a naughty. Doom-Head (Richard Brake) is especially guilty of this. Brake is doing a fine New 52 Joker impression, but when he speaks these awful lines with bugged out eyes and a rictus grin it feels more desperate than threatening. These lines should have been workshopped a bit… and I don’t mean by the clowns in the movie. I mean by writer Rob Zombie.
The world constructed by the movie is so nihilistic that it handicaps its effectiveness as a horror story. Our group faces a dilemma when they find a fellow captive who’s nailed to the floor and roughly all of them elect to abandon her because it was probably a trap. It’s an understandable reaction; earlier they were chased around by a little person in a Nazi clown costume. One of the heroes pleads for the captive woman’s life, but it’s a half-hearted plea at best. Mercy was never on the table.
At this point, I was mainly wondering what the endgame was going to be: a triumphant victory over McDowell or a full conversion into becoming that which you hate. Would Sheri Moon Zombie complete her transformation into Harley Quinn? Sadly, the movie disappoints even on this front. Fans of movies with resolutions will come away disappointed.
Rating: 2/5 stars.
NOTE: In a just world I would have given this movie one star. But if you’ve been paying attention, I tend to reserve that rating for movies that are so bad and so crazy that they loop back to watchable. Like, I actually want you to watch Slender Man so you can see how bad of a horror movie it is. Two stars are the real death knell for me: movies that have so little to recommend that they don’t even have the wrongness to lean back on.