If there’s one thing we’ve all learned about horror movie villains it’s that they can never truly die, but there was still something about the finale to Rob Zombie‘s The Devil’s Rejects that felt quite different from the norm. Just a couple years after he created a trio of iconic characters with Otis, Baby and Captain Spaulding, Zombie chose to definitively kill them off in his sequel to House of 1000 Corpses, bringing an end to their reign of terror with a hail of bullets. The complete and total annihilation of the Firefly family, unforgettably set to the tune of Skynyrd’s “Freebird,” ensured that nobody – not even Zombie himself – could ever make a sequel. After all, unlike Freddy and Jason, the trio was quite human. And humans can die.

But fourteen years later, and against all odds, Otis, Baby and Spaulding are back in Rob Zombie’s 3 from Hell, the highly unlikely sequel to The Devil’s Rejects. How can they come back if we saw them die, you ask? Well, the opening minutes of 3 from Hell provide a pretty unsatisfying answer to that pressing question. Fans have been theorizing for the past year or so that perhaps they died, went to Hell and the Devil spit them back out – they are the “Devil’s Rejects,” after all. Other fans have been thinking that maybe Dr. Satan, introduced in Corpses but cut out of Rejects, acquired their dead bodies and supernaturally brought them back to life. The real answer? They just plain survived the bullet fight. And that’s that.

The opening ten minutes of 3 from Hell play out like grainy newsreel footage from the ’70s, casually informing us that Otis, Baby and Spaulding all beat million-to-one odds and have spent the past 10 years locked up in prison. Fine. Moving on. Not unlike the real-life Manson family, the Firefly family has attained a sort of celebrity cult status; either because they truly believe they’re innocent or because they’re too taken by their counterculture charisma to even care, their fanbase embraces a “Free the Three” rallying cry. It’s an interesting bit of social commentary that feels right in line with the previous film – which cleverly aligned us with the villains and made us wonder why we felt so bad when they met their maker – but it quickly becomes clear that Zombie doesn’t actually have anything to say with 3 from Hell.

Worse yet, he completely fails to justify the decision to undo the trio’s memorable demise.

I’ve always argued that Rob Zombie is a visionary filmmaker; The Devil’s Rejects is his masterpiece, in my eyes, but even his not-quite-beloved work like Halloween II and The Lords of Salem was home to a level of singular artistry that he’s never truly been given the credit for. But the heartbreaking truth is that 3 from Hell is a film without any real vision. You might think that Zombie must’ve come up with a damn good reason to break the ending to The Devil’s Rejects and finally make a sequel that he long promised he had no interest in making, but 3 from Hell almost aggressively says otherwise. Once he rushes past interesting bits like their unlikely survival and their equally unlikely escape from prison, Zombie doesn’t really know what to do with the characters, begging the question of why this film was even made.

3 from Hell is Zombie at his most aimless, as there’s no real narrative thrust and no discernible story that he’s even trying to tell. Yes, the characters do escape from prison over a decade after we thought they died, but Zombie spills them back into the outside world to do little more than spout tired dialogue and kill a whole bunch of people – this time, they’re slicing and dicing in the ’80s, but you wouldn’t notice given the heavily ’70s aesthetic. It starts to feel like 3 from Hell was made out of some sort of contractual obligation rather than a genuine passion from Zombie, and there’s just something depressing about how unambitious it all is.

Even the winning villains, memorable horror movie caricatures in House of 1000 Corpses who were then fleshed out into oddly charming human monsters in The Devil’s Rejects, are hardly given the chance to shine in 3 from Hell. This time around, Bill Moseley‘s Otis, Sheri Moon Zombie‘s Baby and Sid Haig‘s Captain Spaulding are joined by Richard Brake‘s Foxy, who links up with the gang for more killing. Brake, who was the standout highlight of 31, blends perfectly into the world of the Fireflys, but I’d be lying if I said that he’s able to create a character I’d ever care to see more of. That’s more to do with the writing than anything else, however. After seeing both actors deliver such powerhouse performances in previous Zombie films, it’s a bummer to see both Brake and Moseley given very little to sink their teeth into this time. As for Haig, let’s just say it’s nice to see him even if we don’t get to see much of him at all.

It’s Sheri Moon Zombie who gets the most to do in 3 from Hell, as it’s Sheri whose character undergoes something of an evolution. Baby spends the entire first act still locked up in prison, and Rob Zombie makes sure to let us know that this isn’t quite the Baby we knew before. The decade she’s spent in jail has effectively driven Baby insane, allowing Moon Zombie to take her portrayal of the character even more over-the-top than ever. It’s up for debate whether or not she’s a strong enough actress to pull it off – and it doesn’t help that the latter half sees the character weirdly switch back to her Devil’s Rejects-era self – but there’s at least something to be said for the manic energy she injects into the proceedings here.

The biggest problem with the characters, however, is Zombie’s presentation of them. Zombie took a “sympathy for the devils” approach to The Devil’s Rejects, cleverly making us feel for his entirely detestable villains in a way that conjured up all sorts of interesting questions about our inherent fascination with the world’s most evil monsters. But that sort of nuance has been completely stripped away in 3 from Hell, which eradicates the earned comeuppance of the final moments of Rejects and then proceeds to present the murderous trio as the heroes of the story. Zombie is in full-on villain worship mode here, and there’s just something senseless and downright ugly about the whole tone. The artistry, storytelling and entertainment factor of the previous two films in the trilogy are all absent in 3 from Hell, which is only really interested in parading around the gang’s capacity for extreme violence. Only this time, they’re not scary and it’s not presented as being terrifying and/or sad when they take a life. Instead, it feels like we’re supposed to cheer. And it feels more unpleasant than entertaining.

With no discernible story to tell and no real adversary for the trio to square off against, Zombie spends the bulk of 3 from Hell attempting to recreate moments from The Devil’s Rejects – the motel massacre, the overnight stay at a brothel, the revenge plot and even a cutesy argument in a van are all slightly repackaged here, as are several other key moments and story beats from Rejects. Zombie and his characters are simply going through motions we’ve already seen them go through before, and I’m having a hard time understanding why Zombie chose to retroactively lessen the power of such a great movie for the sake of, well, *this.*

I do still believe that Rob Zombie is a visionary filmmaker, one of the most interesting and unique in my lifetime, but lately it seems like he’s catering to what he thinks his core fanbase wants rather than what he’s really got on his mind as an artist. Whereas The Lords of Salem saw him breaking free of any box his previous work had put him in, 3 from Hell sees him stepping right back into the comfort of that box, returning to a world that he just doesn’t seem to have anything left to say about. At two-hours long, it’s a bloated, ugly experience, doing a disservice to great characters and to Zombie’s greatest achievement as a filmmaker.

The one-two punch of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects was something special. One an almost cartoonish introduction to its characters, the other a grounded-in-reality follow-up that plucked them out of their fantastical comfort zone and unleashed them upon the real world. It was a two-film story arc that was brought to an entirely satisfying conclusion well over 10 years ago. 3 from Hell is proof that sometimes in horror, dead really is better.