Let’s run through some of the inherently frightening elements we’ve got in this mix. There’s the carnival and circus motif complete with clowns. Everyone’s skin crawls with that. Then there’s the claustrophobia aspect of being trapped and hunted, anxiety inducing stuff there. The concept of people using human lives as entertainment and callously calling out the odds for survival could have been chilling. Instead, all of it just feels silly. None of the “heads” seem particularly good at their jobs considering how fast they were killed by people who are not self-identified as murderers. Yet the aristocrats claim amongst each other that no one has ever survived 31. I, for one, find that hard to believe.

Everyone in the game, including the victims, are armed with various weapons. None of the “heads” have anything particularly interesting. There’s a chainsaw, knives, and axes but nothing that plays with the carnival theme. Like 2017’s The Belko Experiment, a movie revolving around slaughtering co-workers in a 9-5 office environment, the methods of murder are surprisingly dull. Both movies give us a set up that screams to be engaged with to the fullest and then just fizzles out to people shootin’ and stabbin’. Don’t put all your imagination into the settings, costumes, and names yet none into the killings. You know what we’re here for.

There was certainly a decent amount of gore in this movie but, save for one scene, it didn’t have much of a visceral impact. I prepared myself for the grungy, rusty, dark red blood splattered world of House or Rejects but realized about halfway through that the effect of the violent moments was fairly weak. Also, there were way too many casual rape references tossed around. This is a note to all male filmmakers, not just Rob Zombie: if too much of your plot or horror hinges on sexual assault, maybe rethink it. Not because it’s too abhorrent, which it is, but because over half of us whom you’re trying to scare with it exist in a world where we’re always threatened by it so honestly, it’s not as shocking as you think. It smacks of desperation and an attempt to be edgy but c'mon. We live in the real world where rapists caught red-handed, like Brock Turner, get less than six months in jail and celebrities like Bill Cosby has fans defending him despite over fifty women telling the same story for years. Some crazy-eyed drama club dropout threatening to make Sheri Moon Zombie his “fuck bag” is laughable. The rest of us know that rapists tend to not be quite so obvious, and that’s what makes it scary.

My heart goes out to Richard Brake as Doom-Head, a character that might have been scary or even mildly interesting in a better movie. He delivers a few monologues that probably read terribly on paper but he manages to make them alternate between darkly comic and unhinged. There’s a few hints that he is a man who is tired and almost bored by the job but then finds himself snapping to attention at the scent of blood. The last shot of the movie, one that recalls Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is Doom-Head and Sheri Moon Zombie’s Charly facing each other on a sunbleached stretch of rural road. They’re both bloodied, and with a slow, manic grin, Doom-Head flips out two switchblades, offering one to Charly before the cut to black. My interpretation of his character was that he is a psychotic person who enjoys killing but doesn’t really want to do it with all the trappings. His monologue that opens the film has an almost mocking tone when he mentions “grease paint” and “clowns” as if he finds all of this as silly as I did but hell, at least he gets to do what he loves!

Aside from the wasted motifs, bland gore, and not scary villains, there’s another issue that I cannot stay silent on. Mr. Zombie, for the love of god, please let other people help you with dialogue! At first, I just thought you were terrible at writing female characters since there are a few women in this movie that talk with a narcotized, sexualized fawning that makes Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits look downright sober. Then when I heard the strange interactions between, well, everyone, I realized that Mr. Zombie is maybe not sure how people talk and can’t even come up with captivating scripted conversations either. I don’t need all dialogue to sound real. Trust me, I’m a theater kid. I have an intense love for language that nobody in the history of the world would say naturally but is beautiful and lyrical or biting and barbed. This movie had none of that, and this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this problem.

If this was truly just some gory, torture porn flick (my initial thought which explains my steeling myself before diving in), I probably wouldn’t have written this piece. I would have watched the movie and been like, “alright, that was gross. Why do I always do this to myself? I’m gonna watch Bob’s Burgers till I feel right again.” If this was a gripping, well-executed piece of nastiness, I would have written something about how Rob Zombie can make a good movie when he wants to. Sadly, this was just a bloody, boring mess. Everyone involved deserved better, and ya know what? I’m including Mr. Zombie in that sentiment.